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JV 



SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY 



of the 



United States of America 

From the Settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth 
to the Present Time ; or the 

Anglo-Saxon, the Celt, the Negro 

As the Tliree Great Races that Constitute the American People. 



By y. B. MANSFIELD. 



A DUAL NATIONALITY, 

Originating in the Settlement ot the (Jountry in two Geograpliieal Sections 

witli the Ar-glo-Saxon_or Teutonic Race predominating in the 

one, and the Celtic and the Negro in the other. 

" Ours is a never ceasing struggle of two rival confederacies."— JbTin Adam.<i. 

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, 

And the Organization of an Anglo-Saxon' Republic— Its Overthrow in 1798-99 
by a Revolt of the Celts, who Ruled the Counti*y for the next Sixty Years. 

THE REBELLION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES, 

'J'heir Subjugation— I'he Reconstruction of the Republic, and the 
Return of the Nation to Anglo-Saxon Rule. 



I^TJBrjISHEID BIT THE ^LTJ-THOI^, 



Ha'jkiii.l &. Sow, Printers AND Bindeks, Atchisov Kas. 



IN PRESS 

AND SOON TO BE PUBLISHED 

One Volume, 12mo., 480 Pages; Cloth, $2.00, 

Call on your bookseller for it, or write to the Author, enolosing; Prioe, to 

EFFINGHAM, ATCHISON CO- KAN. 



Tlie design of this work is to bring together, in as 
compact and comprehensive a manner as possible, the leading 
events of the history of the United States in one continuous 
narrative, from the earliest settlement of the country to the 
present time, to show how the character of the people, their 
laws and institutions have been formed by the blending of 
the diversities of nations and races; also to account for the 
long, continued racial, social and political struggle as a con- 
flict with classes that would not assimilate, and races that would 
not blend. This has been characterized by General Shernum 
as a war, "the greatest of all history, a war of tlie Anglo-Saxon 
race for the extension of An glo-(xer manic civilization over 
this continent, which commenced when the first pilgrim 
stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock, and is not yet ended.'' 
While fighting this war we have grown up to a nation of con- 
tinental proportions, and established a Crovernment which 
stands before the world as tlie best ever devised by the 
wisdom of man. 

As a matter., of convenience the work is divided into 
twelve parts, each of which is subdivided into chapters, 
making fortv oic^lit in all. 



SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY 



of the 



United States of America 

From the Settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth 
to the Present Time ; or the 

Anglo-Saxon, the Celt, the Negro 

As the Three Great Races that Constitute the American People. 



By L B. MANSFIELD 



A DUAL NATIONALITY, 

Originating in the Settlement of the Country in two Geographical Sections, 

with the Anglo Saxon or Teutonic Race predominating in the 

one, and the CeltTc and the Negro in the other. 

"Ours is a never ceasing struggle of two rival confederacies/' — John Adams. 

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, 

And the organization of an Anglo Saxon Republic- Its Overthrow in lygS-'gg 
by a Revolt of the Celts, who Ruled the Country for the next sixty years. 

THE REBELLION of the SOUTHERN STATES, 

Their Subjugation — The Reconstruction of the Republic, and 
the Return of the Nation to Anglo Saxon Rule. 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 

1884. 






Entered according to Act of Congress in the year A. D. 1884, 
by J. B. Mansfield, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress 
at Washington, D. C. 



-24(^z> 



7 



CONTENTS. 



Part I. Extends from the two colonial grants of James I. to the 
London and Plymouth companies, in 1G06, to the battle of 
Blenheim, in 1704, on the banks of the Danube, where, in the 
words of Mr. Alison, in his life of Marlborough, the victorious 
arms of Queen Anne decided that America should belong to the 
Anglo Saxon race. It embraces the period of the first century of 
the history of the British American colonies. 

Part II. Extends from the close of the reign of Queen Anne to the 
close of the Revolutionary war, and the signing of the treaty of 
peace, in 1783— seventy years. 

Part III. Extends over a period of twenty five years, from 1783 to 
the close of the second term of President Jefferson in 1808, when 
the foreign slave trade came to an end by constitutional limita- 
tion. This was the period of the organization of the national 
government under the constitution, and of three rebellions: one in 
Massachusetts, one in Pennsylvania, and the rebellion of the 
southern states under the resolutions of 1798-'99 of Thomas 
Jefferson against the execution of the laws of congress in states 
opposed to them. 

Part IV. Extends from the close of Jefferson's administration to the 
passage of the Missouri compromise in 1821 — thirteen years: the 
principal events of which were the war of 1812 and the establish- 
ment of the dividing line between freedom and slavery in the 
United States. 

Part V. Extends from 1821 to the close of the second term of Presi- 
dent Jackson's administration in 1836 — fifteen years— the principal 
events of which were Calhoun's rebellion in South Carolina, and 
the commencement of the great antislavery struggle, which 
culminated in the war of 1861-'65 between the north and south. 

Part VI. Extends from 1836 to the second rebellion of the south 
under Calhoun in 1850 — fourteen years. It was the period of the 
inauguration of the southern shot gun policy for controlling 
political elections, and the intervention of the Roman catholic 
church in American politics. It embraces the administrations of 
Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, and two years of 
Fillmore. 



'•1 CONTENTS. 

Part VII. Extends from J 850 to the close of the administration of 
President Buchanan in 1860 and the rebellion of the southern 
states under the lead of Mr. Calhoun's successor, Jeff. Davis, 
when the Celtic race went out of power, after a period of sixty 
years of almost continuous rule. 

Part VIII. Extends from 1860 to the close of 1862— two tremendous 
years in the history of the United States. It was the first half of 
the war of the rebellion. 

Part IX. Embraces a period of two years and four months from the 
issuing of the proclamation'of emancipation, January 1st, 1863, by 
President Lincoln, to his assassination, in April, 1865, and was 
the last half of the period of the war of the rebellion. 

Part X. Extends from the inauguration of Andrew Johnson as 
President Lincoln's successor to the election of General Grant as 
president in 1868— three years and nine months. Herein will be 
found the history of the reconstruction of the rebel states, the 
abolition of slavery, the negro raised to citizenship and political 
power, and the unwilling and forced return of the rebel states to 
the union. 

Part XI. Extends from 1868 to 1876 — eight years. It embraces the 
two presidential terms of General Grant, the main features of 
which were the restoration of the national credit, the social and 
political demoralization following the close of the war, revolt in the 
Republican party, the financial crash of 1873, operations of the Ku 
Klux Klan, abandonment by the north of their republican allies 
in the south, and the reign of terror that followed. 

Part XII. Extends from the election of President Hayes in 1876 to 
the opening of the presidential canvass in 1884 — eight years. The 
main features of which are the change of policy of the republican 
party, the electoral commission, the withdrawal of the army from 
the south, the overthrow of the legal southern state governments, 
return of the southern ■ oligarchy to the political control of the 
south and lower house of congress, administrations of Garfield 
and Arthur, new questions of politics and government, hopeful 
solicitude of the people in regard to the future of the republic. 



PREFACE, 



The design of the author in offering this sketch ot 
American history to the public is to show what three 
incongruous races of immigrants — the Anglo Saxon and 
the Celt from Europe, and the negro from Africa — have 
accomplished in the way of settling, civilizing, and 
building up a country for themselves and their posterity, in 
the short space of two hundred and seventy five years 
from the first landing upon its shores. 

The colonization of the country was of itself the 
greatest feat upon record. The Anglo Saxons did not 
undertake it alone, as they did the conquest of the Isle of 
Britain, but they brought along with them two other races 
— the Celt and the negro — mobilizing them both into their 
invading armies of civilization that were to open up a new 
age for humanity and for empire, in this western world. 

It is doubtful if at any time previous to the commence- 
ment of the seventeenth century such a wholesale migration 
was possible — the means for locomotion, whether by sea 
or land, not being adequate for the transportation of such 
vast masses. 

A century or thereabouts had intervened between the 
time of the discovery of Columbus, and the colonization of 
America by England. During that intervening period 
John Cabot and his son Sebastian had sailed along the 
Atlantic coast and taken possession in the name of the 
English king. James Cartier had planted the standard of 
Erance upon the banks of the St. Lawrence. Amerigo 
Yespucci had published a glowing account of the sights 



4 PREFACE. 

and scenes lie had witnessed, giving his name to the 
country; and Yerozani had made three voyages here, and 
given the earliest account of the extent of the Atlantic 
coast of the present United States. 

Memorable events had transpired on this continent 
during that time. Pizarro had overrun, plundered and 
destroyed the civilization of Peru. Balboa had ascended 
the mountain heights of Darian upon which he had planted 
the cross of Spain, and after which he had discovered the 
Pacific ocean and taken possession of that also in the 
name of his sovereign. Cortez had pushed his conquests 
till he revelled in the hall of Montezuma; and De Soto, 
emulating the examples of Pizarro and Cortez, having 
vainly sought the gold he coveted in the miasmatic swamps 
and jungles of the south, had found his grave on the banks 
of the Mississippi. Other daring and hardy adventurers 
had found fabulous revenues in the fisheries of Newfound- 
land, the fur trade ot Arcadia, and the gold mines on the 
Pacific coast ; and Gaspar Cortereal had found a source of 
revenue in kidnapping the natives of America and selling 
them in European marts. 

Great events had also transpired in Europe during 
this time. The great German Keformation by Martin 
Luther and others had agitated every country from the 
Straits of Gibraltar to Cape E'orth, as by an earthquake. 
The art of printing had been discovered and was enlighten- 
ing the people by diffusing inteUigence among them. The 
Eoman catholic church was reehng under the blows of the 
Keformation, against which it was struggling to maintain 
itself, by punishing its victims with torture and death, in 
prison, on the block, or at the stake; bloody Mary im- 
mortalized Kogers, Latimer, and Cramner at the stake ; 
and the horrors of St. Bartholomew echoed in one wild 
wail all over Europe, to be paid back in kind on the 
accession of Queen Elizabeth to the English throne, when 



PREFACE. O 

the puritans had the grim satisfaction of seeing the dun- 
geons open and the fagot applied to their catholic 
persecutors. 

Political parties came to be built upon the differences 
in the church. The whipping post and the jibbet were 
familiar objects no less than the fagot and the stake, all 
over Europe. Heads and quarters of church victims and 
state criminals were exposed in the market places as warn- 
ings to all who dare to think, or to speak, or to act different 
from what the priest, or the king and his ministers should 
direct. 

This is but a brief statement of the social earthquake 
heavings that were agitating the nations of Europe at the 
time the London and Plymouth companies entered upon 
the colonization and settlement of their respective grants 
in America; but it is sufhcient to show that there were two 
elements of European society at that time strongly antag- 
onized in their political and religious opinions, one of 
which was the old aristocracy, or the high caste idiots of 
the royal houses and their appendages of nobility, in the 
process of hereditary degeneration; and the other was that 
religious and political element which had been developed 
by the reformation of Luther and Calvin. One was monarch- 
ical, and the other republican in spirit, and the latter only 
waited the lapse of time and an opportunity to become so in 
fact and form; and when emigration opened to this western 
continent these two elements of European society segregated 
as by instinct — the monarchical element going to Virginia 
and the south, and the puritan and republican to New 
England and the north. 

This method of settling these two sections of the 
country with populations so unlike, socially and politically, 
has been an important factor in shaping the entire course 
of our national history. The south and the north have 
suited to the fish and live — where the fish could not share 



6 PREFACE. 

grown up from these antagonistic national germs — the one 
monarchical and the other republican — until they have 
settled and divided the continent between them. These 
two forms of society are as variant in structure and distinct 
in form as any two beings in animated nature; one is the 
embodiment of the principle that equality is the right of 
man, and it expands upon the horizontal plane of a pure 
democracy; the other denies the principle that equality is 
the right of man, but the right of equals only, and takes the 
form of a social aristocracy. The labor of one is voluntary, 
hired and paid, and the other, until our late great civil 
war, involuntary and enforced; in the one there is a free 
elective franchise; in the other, the reins of government 
are in the hands of the aristocracy only. In the one, 
government is guided by the best intelligence of the 
masses; in the other, by the interests of the ruling class. 
In the one there is a disfranchised . element which can 
never rise to political equality, while in the other the 
poorest laborer has equal political power with the wealth- 
iest citizen. Such are some of the more obvious differences 
in the constitution of society which divide the people of 
the two sections of our common country. 

Between these two forms of society a contest for 
existence was continual ; neither could concur in the 
requisitions of the other, neither could expand within the 
forms of a single government without encroaching upon 
the other. The tendency to social conflict preexisted in 
these two forms of society, and a conflict such as they came 
to in 1861 was inevitable. 

They have been compared to "twin lobsters in a single 
shell, if such things were possible, in which the natural 
expansion of one must be inconsistent with the existence of 
the other; or like an eagle and a fish joined by an indis- 
soluble band — which, for no reason of its propriety, could 
act together, where the eagle could not share the fluid 



PREFACE. i 

the fluid suited to the bird and live — and when one must 
perish that the other may survive, unless the unnatural 
union shall be severed — so these societies could not if they 
vi^ould concur." 

The principle that races are unequal, politically, and 
that among unequals inequality is right, would have been 
destructive to that form of republican liberty which had 
been planted by our puritan ancestry, and was growing 
naturally in the north; and the principle that all men are 
politically equal would have been equally destructive of 
slavery and slave institutions at the south. Each required 
the element suited to its social nature. 

Had the foreign slave trade never been suppressed, 
slave society would have triumphed. It extended to the 
borders of JSTew England, and would have grown stronger 
from year to year with continued immigrations from 
Europe, and importations of slaves from Africa; but with 
the slave trade suppressed northern civilization triumphed, 
and when the states of JSTew York, Pennsylvania, and E'ew 
Jersey abolished slavery and substituted hired labor, wealth 
and political power increased in the north in a far greater 
proportion than in the south. Then came the war of 
1812, brought on by the south to suppress the growing 
power of the north, but resulted in a greater detriment to 
their own. When the north became strong enough to 
grasp and hold the government they reached out and took 
possession of it. Slavery was then within their grasp, and, 
forced to the option of extinction in the union or independ- 
ence out of it, rose in rebellion and fought a four years 
war for independence. They lost their institution of 
slaVery as a result of the war, but have since gained in 
politics what they could not by war, and that is a land 
renting peasantry, with a limited franchise and a priv- 
ileged ruling class, tliough not established by the authority 
of law, nevertheless exists. 



b PREFACE. 

The south has risen upon its ruins to be a threatening 
and formidable pcjwer in the union again, and their sectional 
hate only slumbers because of a transverse antagonism 
in the negro race. That race now constitutes their vulnerable 
point; but the southern oligarchy will not permit them to 
rise as a rival political force in their midst without 
another effort to retard, restrict, or destroy them, and there 
are those who see a fearful strife impending between the 
two races (the Celtic and the negro), in the near future, 
in which the north will be compelled to take sides. 

"The war for the extension of Anglo Germanic civil- 
ization over this continent, that commenced when the iirst 
pilgi'im stepped ashore on Plymouth rock," which General 
Sherman characterized in one of his speeches to the grand 
army, "as the greatest war in all history, and not yet ended," 
must go on until that ideal future for which our puritan 
ancestry hoped and struggled, and their descendants toiled 
and fought, has been secured in the south as it has been 
in all the north and west. 

It may be that to that end another revolution may be 
necessary. It is to be apprehended that the contest 
between free and slave institutions is not yet over. 



A SKETCH 

— OF THE 



Political History "i^ieUnited States. 



PART I. 



CHAPTER I. 

The two Knglish grants from which our dual nationality of " North- 
ern " and " Southern ■' States is derived— Claims to the country* 
by France and Spain, contested by the English— Teutonic origin 
of the English people— Organization of the London and Plymouth 
companies to colonize the country — Unfortunate results of their 
first expeditions — Rebellion of the Virginia colonists, and Cap- 
tain Smith's proclamation to the rebels. 

The United States of America have grown up to their 
present proportions of a great and powerful nation from the 
two English grants of its territory, made by King James I, 
to the London, and Plymouth Emigration and Mercantile 
Companies, in 1606. 

Spain then occupied a considerable portion of the conti- 
nent, which it claimed by virtue of the discoveries made by 
Columbus ; the French also occupied a portion it, which 
they claimed by the discoveries made by Cartier ; and the 
English claimed all the territory occupied by both the 
Spanish and French, under the discoveries made by John- 
Cabot. 

The English people possessed far superior qualifica- 
tions for colonizing and settling the country, than either the 



10 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

Spanish or the French. They were the born soldiers, 
sailors, merchants, and farmers, that the successful prose- 
cution o± such an enterprise required. They took more 
readily to clearing off the forests, cultivating the land, 
building towns and cities, and organizing political com- 
munities, than any other race or people. 

They were the descendants of the all-conquering Teu- 
tonic race, from the tribes of the Angles, the Saxons, and 
the Normans ; the two former crossing the German ocean 
and taking possession of the Isle of Britain, in the fifth 
and sixth centuries, and giving it the name of England, 
from their native Angeln ; and the latter becoming its in- 
vaders and conquerors, in the tenth century, under William 
of Normandy. From England they crossed the Atlantic 
ocean in 1606-7, to take possession of and settle this West- 
ern Continent, following the example of their fathers in 
taking possession of the Isle of Britain, 

'• The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That they shall take who have the power ; 
And they shall keep, who can." 

Two companies of English merchants and capitalists 
were formed in 1606 ; one known as the London company, 
and the other as the Plymouth company ; to each of which 
the King made a grant of territory in North America, sev- 
eral times larger than all England, Scotland, and Ireland 
combined. The grant to the London company embraced all 
the country on the coast of Virginia and North Carolina, 
between the parallels of 34 degrees and 38 degrees, north 
latitude ; and the grant to the Plymouth company em- 
braced all that portion of country on the coast of New 
England, from the mouth of the Hudson river to Passama- 
quoddy bay, between the parallels of 41 degrees and 45 
degrees north latitude. 

Between these two grants there was an intervening, or 
neutral, territory of three degrees in breadth, 38 to 41 de- 
grees, which was open to either company ; but neither was 



THE UNITED STATES. 11 

to build •establiskments within one hundred miles of the 
other. From these two English grants the people of the 
United States as a nation derive their dual origin and 
character. On each grant was planted the seed germ of a 
nation — Massachusetts becoming the nucleus of one, and 
Yirginia the other ; dividing the country between them 
in two great geographical sections, Northern and South- 
ern. They were the representatives ol the two elements 
•of European population; that of the South consisted 
of the titled orders and appendages of rank, while 
that of the IN'orth consisted of the untitled class who 
came here to escape the thraldom of caste, and to labor 
and enjoy the fruits of their toil. These classes were 
unhomogeneous and hostile in Europe, and showed no dis- 
position to assimilate here, but were generally on opposite 
sides on all subjects of an economical, industrial, or politi- 
cal character, and have grown up as two distinctive peoples 
in one common nationality, each inspiring and reciprocating 
prejudice, and engaged in a perpetual struggle for the 
domination of one over the other. 

These two companies, having received the titles to their 
grants, commenced fitting out expeditions to colonize and 
settle them. There w^as a prevailing opinion in England 
at that time, that there were gold mines here, along 
the Atlantic coast, as numerous and rich as those on the 
Pacific, from which the Spaniards were taking immense 
quantities of the precious metal ; and it was also believed 
that when the Atlantic coast became better known, and 
further discoveries had been made, that the Northwest 
passage to the Indies would be found, which had so long 
been looked for in vain. 

The Plymouth company sent out their first expedition • 
in 1606, consisting of two ships, one of which was captured 
and confiscated by the Spaniards ; the other escaped, and, 
.after making a survey of the coast, returned to England 



12 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

with such a glowing account of the country — of its mag- 
nificent harbors, rivers, fisheries, and great woods — that the 
company fitted out the next year two more ships, with one 
hundred adventurers, whom they sent out to find, both the 
reported inexhaustible gold mines, and the northwest 
passage to the Indies. 

They landed on the coast of Maine, and remained 
there all summer, engaged in building log cabins, a store- 
house for their provisions, and a fort for protection from 
the Indians, in case they should be attacked by them. 
They then commenced a diligent search for gold mines ; 
but finding none, a part of these adventurers became dis- 
couraged and abandoned the the search as hopeless, and 
returned to England in the fall, leaving fortyfive of their 
number, who were more sanguine to remain over winter, 
and continue the search for gold ; but the rigors of the 
climate, and the hostitity of the Indians soon made this 
little company wish that they had also gone with their 
comrades. The Indians burned their cabins and the store- 
house containing their provisions, so that between the rigors 
of a ^ew England winter and the loss of their provisions 
they had a very narrow escape from death; when the ships 
arrived from England in the spring, bringing supplies to 
enable them to prosecute their enterprise, they had fully 
determined to abandon it, and went on board ship and re- 
turned home. That was the result of the first attempt of 
the Enghsh to colonize and settle JS^ew England. It was 
the counterpart of the attempt of Sir Walter Raleigh, to 
establish a colony on Roanoke Island in 1585, with the 
exception that they did not all perish as Raleigh's colony 
did. 

Nothing more was done by the Plymouth company to 
colonize their grant, with any promise of success, until the 
arrival of the colony of Puritans from the north of England^ 
in 1620. 



THE UNITED STATES. 13 

The London company sent out their first expedition 
to Virginia the same year (1606) that the Plymouth com- 
pany sent theirs to New England ; but it was all winter 
making the voyage, and did not arrive at the mouth of 
James river until the middle of the following May, 1607. 

The expedition consisted of three small vessels, one of 
one hundred tons burthen, one of forty tons, and one of 
twenty tons, all under the command of Captain IS'ewport, 
who was also a member of the corporation. There were 
also six other members of the London company on board, 
among whom was the celebrated Captain John Smith. 
These men constituted the officers for the government of 
the colony, having been appointed by the King, under 
seal, with instructions that the seal should not be broken 
and the names of the officers be made known until their 
arrival in Virginia. 

There were 105 immigrants in this expedition, besides 
the members of the company, and the small company of 
soldiers who were brought over as a police force to aid the 
company in maintaining their government. All of these 
immigrants, with the exception of a dozen or so who were 
mechanics, were the thriftless younger sons of the aristoc- 
racy, men born and raised in affluence, and none of whom 
had families, or had ever performed any labor. They were 
all styled "gentlemen," and passed as such among their 
fellows, not because they had either wealth or character 
to give them such a standing in respectable society, but 
because of their birth and family connections ; some were 
broken down merchants, and others were educated men 
without occupation ; sporting men who had fallen into 
vicious courses, and, having committed crimes that would 
subject them to the penalties of the law, and to save them 
from it, their influential relatives and triends had secured 
their transportation to these shores. 

They had a boisterous passage over ; in addition to 
the perils of the sea, a fearful mutiny broke out in the 



' 



14 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

"gentleman" class, which was finally quelled by the 
Kev. Mr. Hunt, Chaplain of the expedition, to whose 
judicious and earnest appeals the mutineers yielded, and 
quiet and order was restored. 

On landing, the carpenters and laborers went to work 
in putting up log cabins to live in, also a store-house,, 
church, tavern, fort, and outbuildings for the stock. 

The seven members of the corporation met and 
organized their government for the colony. It was only a 
corporation despotism. All authority was vested in the 
members of the corporation who^held the charter. Their 
ordinances constituted the only law of the colony, and 
from the decision of the colonial council there was no 
appeal. Under the King their power was supreme, and all 
who immigrated here were to all intents and purposes their 
subjects. The English statute and the common law were 
not recognized at all. 

The gentlemen class commenced, immediately on land- 
ing, their search for the Yirginia gold mines. They 
scoured the forests and forded the streams, but .found no 
signs of the presence of gold, and after a few weeks, in 
utter discouragement and despair they gave up the search; 
but they made raids upon the Indians, and provoked their 
hostility by stealing their corn, robbing their gardens, 
breaking into their wigwams and assaulting and carrying 
off their women. 

Captain Newport returned to England after a short 
stay, leaving the twenty ton pinnace for the use of the 
colony ; but he had not been long gone before the colonists 
became reduced to the most wretched condition. 

Coming into this malarious climate at a most unfavor- 
able season of the year, their provisions which they had 
brought over becoming spoiled from climatic influences, 
they were obliged to depend upon the native fruits to be 
found in the forests, and the fish with which the rivers 



/ 
( 



THE UNITED STATES. 15 

abounded. They soon fell sick with the fevers incident to 
this region of the country, and there were times when 
there were not five men in the colony fit for duty, and the 
outcries of the sick and the groans of the dying rent the 
air night and day. Three or four often died of a night, 
and their corpses were dragged out of the cabins in the 
morning like dead dogs, to be buried. Their sufi'erings 
were so great as to excite the sympathy of the Indians 
whom they had so greatly wronged; but notwithstanding 
that, these dusky savages brought them food and remedies 
to mitigate their sufi'erings. (1) 

Before the end of that summer nearly half of these 
colonists had died ; when the sickness had abated the 
survivors brought new miseries upon themselves by their 
violent quarrels. The ofticers of the colonial government 
proved to be a set of thieves and scoundrels unworthy of 
any trust or responsibility. They quarreled and stole from 
the company and from each other, and conspired first 
against one and then another, and between their quarrels 
and conspiracies and those of their unruly subjects, the 
speedy breaking up and destruction of the colony seemed 
inevitable. Wingfield, the Governor, was detected in 
pilfering the choicest stores of the company and appropri- 
ating them to his own use, and also in a conspiracy to steal 
the company's vessel and proceed to sea with it on a cruise 
of piracy, leaving the colony to its fate. For this he was 
deposed, and the new Governor, who became his suc- 
cessor, proved in a short time to be as base a villain as 
Wingfield, and he, loo, was deposed. 

Afi*airs iu the colony had reached a crisis. There 
was now only one man in it who had the capacity to 
govern it, and that was Captain Smith. He was, as we 

1 Our soldiers who were encamped in that same locality where these 
pioneer colonists were (the swnmps of the Chickahominy and thf- James, 
in 1862) know but too well what the sickness of that regrion is. Our army met 
with heavier losses there from fever than it ever did in any campaign fight- 
ing the enemy. 



16 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

have said, one of the corporate proprietors, and, jealous of 
his superior abilities, the other members of this conclave of 
scoundrels formed a conspiracy against him and deposed 
him from membership. Two other conspiracies were 
formed for stealing the company's vessel and proceeding 
to sea with it, on a piratical expedition; but they were 
detected in season to be defeated, and one man was killed. 

Smith saw that the time had come for him to act; that 
there was only one course to be pursued to save the colony 
from self destruction, and that was for him to assume the 
control ot it, and the exercise of autocratic power. This he 
did, and with his corporal's guard of soldiers, joined by a 
few volunteers, soon reduced the malcontents to obedience, 
but not to loyalty. They then plotted to assassinate him, 
but he discovered the plot and threw the would be assassins 
into close confinement, where he kept them until he could 
3end them to England. 

At this juncture Captain Newport arrivedfrom England 
with his two vessels, bringing fresh supplies. This had 
the effect of abating for a while the prevailing discord and 
tumult. He brought over in this second expedition one 
hundred and twenty more emigrants, but they were, un- 
fortunately for the prosperity of the colony, of the same 
class he had brought before — vagabond gentlemen, im- 
poverished in spirit and fortune, a turbulent horde of rakes 
and libertines better fitted for the rope of the hangman 
than to become the founders of a commonwealth. Cap- 
tain Smith, justly indignant at the arrival of such a class 
of emigrants, and at the want of judgment on the part of 
the company as to the kind of men most needed here, 
wrote home to them not to send any more such, but in 
their next shipment to send farmers, mechanics, and 
tradesmen of various kinds — that a few of such men w^ould 
be worth more than a thousand such as they had sent 
here; but they paid no heed to his request. 



THE UNITED STATES. 17 

On the arrival of this lot of newcomers the gold craze 
l^roke out afresh, and there was nothing talked of but 
digging, washing, and refining gold. For purposes of a 
more thorough exploration of the country they formed 
themselves into two companies — one under the leadership 
of Mr. Martin, who was one of the corporate proprietors, 
to search for gold mines; and the other, under Captain 
Newport, to search for the northwest passage to the 
Pacific Ocean. 

They had been absent but a few days from Jamestown 
w^hen both parties returned, reporting the most astonishing 
success in the discoveries they had made, in which it will 
appear that their credulity was as boundless as their avarice 
and passion for gold was unbridled. Mr. Martin's party 
had noticed the shining pyrites in the sands on the banks 
of the James, and, mistaking them for gold, now believed 
themselves possessed of riches far transcending anything; 
ever dreamed of. Mr. Martin supposed himself to be the 
richest man in all Europe. Captain Newport's supposed 
discoveries were no less important an'd marvelous in their 
character. He reported that his expedition had discovered 
the Pacific Ocean at or near James River Falls, and that 
that river was the outlet or channel connecting that ocean 
with the Atlantic. Thus had been discovered the long 
sought for northwest passage to the Pacific and to the 
riches of Asia. But when the Indian chief Powhatan 
came to hear of it he scouted the idea, and asserted that to 
his positive knowledge there was no ocean, nor any other 
great body of water, anywhere about there; but Captain 
New^port persisted in his belief that he had discovered the 
Pacific, against the strongest statements of Powhatan to 
the contrary. 

But Captain Newport was more immediately interested, 
^as were the rest of the colonists, in the discoveries of Mr. 
iMartin's party, than in the discovery of the Northwest 



18 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

passage, and that became a matter of secondary considera- 
tion. He ordered his two vessels to be loaded with 
auriferous (?) sand, having learned no lesson from a former 
shipment of worthless earth to England, from Hudson's 
Straits, a quarter of a century previous. 

After spending fourteen weeks in loading, the vessels 
set sail for England. On their arrival and the discovery, 
by the company, of the worthlessness of the cargo, " their 
disappointment and angry covetousness was fully dis- 
played." (Bancroft's CoL Hist. U. S., p. 69.) 

In their rage over this expensive and worthless consign- 
ment they sent Newport immediately back to Virginia, and 
told him that unless he should return next time with a 
sufficient amount of gold or other commodities correspond- 
ing in value to the cost of the adventure, the colonists 
should be left in Virginia as banished men, {ihid.^ p 69,) 
and they gave him seventy more emigrants, from the 
floating scum of London, such as he had brought before. 

But no remunerative return came. They had seem 
their capital expended, and now realized that it was lost 
beyond recovery ; that their enterprise in Virginia, like 
that of the Plymouth company in New England, was a. 
failure ; that there were no gold mines in Virginia, and they 
had no disposition to make any further search for them. 

They had also become satisfied of another thing, and. 
that was, that the Pacific Ocean was not to be reached by 
sailing up the James river. But the wonder is that these- 
men, the descendants of the Scandinavian pirates of the 
tenth century, whose ships were cruising in every sea, and 
whose adventurers were roaming over every country, should 
persist with such pertinacity in searching for gold mines onx 
the eastern coast of this continent, where none existed,, 
without ever making the slightest effort for getting pos- 
session of the mines on the west, or Pacific coast, of whose^ 
existence they must have known, as English privateers^ 



THE UNITED STATES. 19' 

from Francis Drake down to much later times, cruised on 
that coast to capture and rob Spanish galleons as they came 
out from its ports, bound homeward, laden with gold from 
those mines. They had failed; but they sent no informa- 
tion of it to their colonists in Virginia, or any further 
supplies, nor any instructions as to what they should do. 

Captain Smith was governor, dictator, king — exercising 
absolute power over not only his own turbulent and rebel- 
lious colonists, but over the Indian tribes also. 

The greatest anxiety prevailed in the colony as to the 
cause of the interruption of all communication with En- 
gland, of which they were kept in such profound ignorance; 
and it was well, perhaps, that they were. Their supplies 
of provisions had become exhausted, and they were once 
again on the point of starvation; and that, too, in a country 
where the forests abounded with game and the rivers with 
fish. But they were too proud and indolent to gather their 
own food when so near at hand and easy to be obtained, or 
to cook it when obtained for them. 

They insisted, our Yirginia gentlemen did, that their 
birth and condition ought to exempt them from the degra- 
dation of work; that it was the duty of the corporation to 
feed them; and as to the requirement that they should 
work, hunt, fish, or gather fruit, they protested that they 
would not do it, even to save themselves from starvation. 
Would they do it to save the colony ? 

A rebellion was plotted by the gentlemen class, but 
Smith nipped it in the bud by arresting the leaders, and 
placing them in close confinement. He then obtained a 
short supply of provisions from the Indians to tide over the 
time when he could put his plans into execution, and then 
issued the following proclamation, which we find in his 
History of Virginia : 

Countrymen ! The long experience of our late miseries, I hope, 
is sufficient to persuade every one to a present correction of himself, 
and think not that either my pains nor the adventurers' purses wilK 



"20 POLITICAL HISTOEY OF 

ever maintain you in idleness and sloth. I speak not this to you all, 
for divers of you, I know, deserve both honor and better reward than 
is yet here to be had, but the greater part must be more industrious 
or starve. 1 

You see now that power resteth wholly in myself. You must 
obey this now for a law, that he that will not work, shall not eat, 
(except by sickness he be disabled,) for the labors of thirty or forty 
honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hun- 
dred and fifty idle loiterers ; and though you presume the authority 
here is but a shadow, and that I dare not touch the lives of any, for 
fear my own must answer it. 

The letters patent ishall each week be read to you, whose contents 
will tell you the contrary. I would wish you, therefore, without 
contempt, lo seek to observe these orders set down; for there are now 
no more counsellors to protect you or curb my endeavors. Therefore, 
he that otfendeth, let him assuredly expect his due punishment. 

Immediately on the issuing oi this proclamation, Smith 
divided the whole colony into gangs of ten and fifteen men 
€ach, laid out their work for them, and ordered them out 
to their allotted tasks. The turbulent and refractory, rather 
than to take the knout, or whatever other punishment 
Smith might devise to inflict upon them, performed theirs ; 
but his life was in constant danger from them on account 
of their conspiracies to assassinate him. 

1 Such was the strange condition of some of one hundred and fifty, that 
had tliey not been forced, nolens volens, to perlorm together and prepare their 
victuals, tliey would all have starved or eaten one another. IRichard Potts, 
clerk of the council, in Smithes History of Virginia, p. 228.] 



THE UNITED STATES. 21 



CHAPTER II. 



Reorganization of the London company— Sailing of the second ex- 
pedition to Virginia — Captain John Smith the life and soul of the 
colony — His abandonment of it, and return to England — Impor- 
tation of the criminal classes as slave laborers for the proprietors — 
Attempt to absorb the native population by blending with the 
English, unsuccessful— Importation of marriageable girls from 
England and Ireland for wives for the colonists — A company 
chartered by the King to deal in slaves and kidnap negroes on 
the coast of Africa for that purpose— Negro slavery introduced 
in Virginia in 1620— Confiscation, by the King, of the grant made 
to the Virginia company, and the company dissolved — the death 
of the King and the accession of his son, Charles I, to the throne 
of England. 

After remaining for some months in a state of inac- 
tivity and indecision as to what they would do. the Lon- 
don company finally determined on a reorganization of 
their company, and to renew their enterprise of colonizing 
Virginia, but on a different plan, that is, to establish regu- 
lar industries in which to employ the idle, criminal and 
pauper class of the population, and make them earn their 
living. This would not only really relieve the Kingdom 
of its overcrowded population, but would be fairly remu- 
nerative to themselves. 

They obtained a new charter, and enlisted in their 
enterprise a number of new men possessed of large capital^ 
and resumed their work of colonizing Yirginia. Lord 
Delaware was appointed governor for life, and under the 
new charter they had agreed, in consideration thereof, to 
take out to Yirginia "all the dissolute persons whom the 
Knight Marshal would deliver for that purpose." They 
fitted out an expedition of nine ships, and took on board 



22 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

five hundred emigrants, consisting principally of those who 
T^ere delivered to them under the act of 39 Elizabeth, ch. 4, 
which authorized the banishment of rogues and vagabonds. 
As for good laborers, they did not wish to take any of 
them, as they were more useful in England. 

This expedition sailed in the latter part of May, under 
the command of Captain Newport, having on board 
Lieutenant Governor Gates and Admiral George Somers, 
who were to relieve Captain Smith in the government of 
the colony, until the arrival of Lord Delaware, who was not 
to come out for several months; but the vessel on which 
they had taken passage was separated from the rest in a 
storm, and wrecked on one, of the Bermuda islands, and 
one vessel was lost, so that only seven reached Yirginia. 

The emigrants by this expedition, intended to be the 
salvation of the colony, came near proving its destruction. 
They brought the news ol the failure of the company, and 
the reorganization of a new company, under a new charter, 
and the appointment of new officers, all of whom were on 
the missing vessel and supposed to be lost. 

This information set all of Smith's desperadoes in 
commotion again, and they determined not to submit to 
his government any longer. New acts of insubordination 
were of daily occurrence, and Smith's capacity for con- 
trolling men was brought to the severest trial; but he 
proved equal to the emergency, and he would have con- 
tinued to carry on the government till the arrival of the 
new officers who were appointed to succeed him, but for 
an accident by which he came near losing his life. It 
accomplished all, however, that his mutinous subjects most 
ardently desired: it brought his career in Yirginia to a 
close. He was blown up by the explosion of a bag of gun- 
powder, while out on an expedition to obtain food for his 
colony, and the necessity for surgical treatment which was 
not to be had in Yirginia, compelled him to turn over the 



THE UNITED STATES. 23 

•government of ithe colony to other hands and return to 
England. He sailed about Michaelmas time in 1609, and 
never again returned to Virginia. 

At the time of his departure there were in the colony 
four hundred and ninety persons, with a supply of provis- 
ions in store for ten weeks, twenty-four pieces of artillery, 
three hundred muskets, and a sufficient supply of other 
arms and ammunition, and farming tools, seven horses, six 
hundred hogs, and the same amount of poultry, besides a 
few sheep and goats. He had also a military force of 
one hundred well drilled soldiers to execute his authority. 
Here were all the elements of prosperity but women for 
wives for the settlers, unless they formed alliances or 
mesalliances with the natives. 

The wrecked passengers on the island of Bermuda 
lived there for nine months on its spontaneous productions; 
for the most part on wild hogs they found there, and the 
fish with which the small streams and the sea shore 
abounded. 

They had been ashore but a few days, however, before 
they began to quarrel. One of the historians says ''that 
it seemed as if the air of America was infectious and 
inclined men's minds to wrangles and contention, so soon 
did this people fall out. They separated into cliques and 
factions, and lived apart from each other, more like enemies 
and strangers than like a party of acquaintances and friends 
involved in one common calamity." 

They soon began to form plans for building a vessel 
to escape from the island; but they quarreled so that they 
could not agree to work upon one, so they commenced two. 
They built these out of timber they found upon the island, 
in connection with the timber they had saved from the 
wreck. 

This expedition was the first to bring out families of 
^women and children. During the time this little com- 



24 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

munity were on the island there were two births, one' 
wedding, one execution, and one murder. Two of the; 
men who were about to be executed for crimes which thej 
had committed lied into the woods, and were left on the- 
island when the ships sailed. 

On their arrival at Jamestown they were horror stricken< 
at the appalling scenes of misery, death, and desolation 
that everywhere met their eyes. They ascertained that as 
soon as Smith had left the colony, universal anarchy and 
all its attendant horrors followed; that a party of thirty had 
seized one of the vessels and proceeded to sea as pirates;, 
that their stock of ten weeks provisions left in store by 
Smith had been rapidly consumed; that they had become 
involved in a series of dreadful quarrels among themselves,, 
and also with the Indians, by whom many of their number- 
had been killed. Sickness had also broken out among 
them, by which many had died; so that when these vessels 
arrived from Bermuda, the miserable survivors here had 
become reduced to such extremeties of woe as no pen can 
describe, and out of the four hundred and ninety persons 
left by Smith on his departure, all were dead but sixty, 
and these were rapidly sinking into a state of absolute^ 
despair. 

The commissioners, as soon as they saw the desperate 
condition of these people, decided that any further attempt 
at colonization in Virginia was hopeless, and determined 
to embark the few persons and effects that remained, on 
board such vessels as they had, and return to Ensjland. 

Every one was exultant at the thought of leaving the 
land where they had experienced such dreadful suffering, 
and some proposed to make a bonfire of the town and go. 
away in the blaze of it ; but this the commander would not 
allow. They embarked on board their vessels and dropped 
down the stream, happy, as they supposed, in the prospect 
of leaving the country forever; but they had gone only half 



THE UNITED STATES. 25 

way down the river when tliej were siir])risecl by meeting- 
the advance ot Lord Dehaware's tleet coming up, having 
on board a large number of emigrants, a company of 
soldiers, and ample supplies of provisions, and, what was 
of the greatest importance, authority — and a sufHcient 
military force for the maintenance of an efficient govern- 
ment. The refugees were persuaded to return, and that 
night occupied tlie fort and the houses of the town, which 
they were now glad they had not burned. 

Lord Delaware adopted Smith's industrial system, and 
put his colonists to work in gangs, under overseers, who' 
were ordered to shoot the first man who was disobedient, 
or refused to labor. Six hours labor a day was all that 
was deemed prudent or necessary to require ; yet Smith 
said there were those who would ^^refei' to starve rather 
than perform that much. One days labor ^ was anqDly 
sufficient to provide the laborer with food for a week. 

Lord Delaware had been here but a short time when 
his health became so affected by the climate that he was 
obliged to resign and return to England. He was suc- 
ceeded soon after by Thomas Dale, who w^as a man of 
sterling good sense and a rigid disciplinarian. He fully 
agreed with what Smith had said — "that no prosperity could 
be expected in Yirginia except by labor, and the establish- 
ment of regular industry." 

It was during the early part of Dale's administration 
that the English undertook the experiment of absorbing 
the Indian race into the English by intermarriage, as a 
more preferable way of conquering them, than by fighting 
them. Lord Palmerston, it will be remembered, once 
proposed to make the conquest of Ireland by intermarriage 
with the Ii'ish, and offered a reward of £20 to every Eng- 
lishman who would marry an Irish woman. One of the 
English colonists by the name of John Rolfe, said tohave 
been a widower, became attached to Pocahontas, the; 

c 



26 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

daughter of the Indian chief Powhatan. He wrote a letter 
to Governor Dale asking his permission to marry her, and 
promised to convert her to Christianity, if the governor 
•would give his consent. Dale approved his application 
most cordially, and the authorities of the church also gave 
it their sanction. Her true name was said to be Matoax; 
but owing to the superstitions of her father, who believed 
the English to possess powers for working supernatural 
-enchantments might work her some harm, if they knew 
her true name, it was carefully concealed from them. 
She had previously been strongly attached to Captain John 
Smith, but he had left the country, and she had announced 
her determination never to marry any other man than 
Smith. To change her purpose she was deceived by the 
story that Smith was dead, and in that belief she agreed to 
marry Rolfe. 

She had on one occasion saved Smith's life from the 
treachery of her father, who had arranged to surprise 
Smith, and destroy him and his whole party while at sup- 
per : but not exactly in the w\ay our tradition has it. 
Instead of throwing herself across Smith's neck, as his 
head was laid upon the fatal block to take the blow from 
the club that her father had raised to dash out his brains, 
she travelled one dark night through the woods to warn 
Captain Smith of his danger. For this he offered to re- 
ward her with such trinkets as she would have been 
delighted to have received ; but she dare not take them, she 
said, " for fear her father might see them, and, suspecting 
how she came by them, would kill her." 

She had refused to go to Jamestown, ever since the 
departure of Smith, and a plot was now laid to capture her, 
and take her there as a prisoner. The reason for her cap- 
ture was to hold her as a hostage, and make her father 
give up some English prisoners, and some stolen arms, in 
exchange for her; and the plot was successful. It was 



THE UNITED STATES. 27 

carried out in the following manner : Pocahontas was 
staying with the Potomac Indians in 1613, and Captain 
Argall, a man notorious for his dishonest and infamous 
practices, who happened to be trading on the river at the 
time, bribed Japazaws, the Indian chief, with whom he was 
staying, with a copper kettle, to entice her on board his 
vessel, where he detained her and took her to Jamestown. 
Here she was detained while the negotiations were going 
on between the English and her father for her exchange. 
Meanwhile affairs took a new turn, and she was married to 
Rolfe, with all the imposing ceremonial that the church 
and state could give. 

The marriage was acceptable to Powhatan, who sent 
an uncle and two brothers of Pocahontas to witness it, 
besides a present of buckskins to his daughter and her 
husband. This marriage brought about peace during 
Powhatan's lifetime between the English and the Indians. 
A free intermingling of the two races now took place, 
which lasted for eight years. 

Bancroft says, in his colonial history : ' ' That it 
seemed that the European and native races were about to 
become blended." There were many other marriages, 
probably, between the two races, following this. The Indians 
demanded to be called Englishmen, and declared them- 
selves the subjects of King James; but the amalgamation 
of the races proceeded very slowly, as well as the nation- 
alizing of the Indians as Englishmen, and finally it ceased 
entirely, and the two races again became enemies, and 
returned to their fighting. 

In a little more than two years after their marriage 
Polfe and Pocahontas went to England on a bridal tour, 
accompanied by Governor Dale, and some Indians whom 
Powhatan had sent with his daughter. Their arrival 
<?aused a great sensation, and they were called upon by the 
king and the dignitaries of the kingdom ; but in a little 



28 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

time their stay became very unpleasant, not only on the 
account of the climate of London, and the uncongenial 
habits of civilization, which affected Pocahontas very un- 
favorably, but by reason of the jealousy of the king who 
affected to beheve that Eolfe, by marrying an Indian prin- 
cess, the daugliter of a foreign potentate, had acquired 
proprietary rights to the country, as the successor of 
Powhatan, which the king claimed by right of discovery ; 
and it was seriously debated in the privy council whether^ 
by making such a marriage without the king's consent,, 
Kolfe had not committed treason ; and Polfe found it 
necessary to desist from calling Pocahontas his wife. She 
was greatly affected on receiving a visit from Captain 
Smith who was then at Brentford, busy with his prepara- 
tions to sail for New England, and whom she believed to 
be dead. She went to Gravesend to take ship to return to 
America, and was there taken sick, and died of small pox, 
three years after her marriage, leaving one son, from whom 
many prominent Yirginia families claim their descent : 
such as the Boilings, the Murrays, Grays, Flemings, Eld- 
ridges, etc. Every one knows with what pride old John 
Kandolph used to boast of his Indian blood which he in- 
herited as a descendant of Pocahontas. 

It is by a singular fate, remarked Dean Stanley when 
in this country, "that while Pocaliontas the earliest, or 
almost the earliest. Christian convert of the native tribes 
of North America, lies buried within the parish 
church at Gravesend, where she closed her life, the remains 
of John Smith, after his long and stormy career, should 
repose in the solemn gloom of the Church of St. Sepulchre, 
in the city of London, 'Here,' such was his epitaph, 'he 
lies conquered who conquered all.' " 

Governor Dale returned to Yirginia after having com- 
pleted his visit, and administered the affairs of the colony 
for five years afterwards. His government was essentially 



THE UNITED STATES. 29 

military. The laws by which he governed the colony 
were a translation of the rules and articles of war of the 
United Provinces, printed and sent over here by the king 
and council, and not objected to by the London company, 
or any of its members here in Yirginia. He made ex- 
periments in various industrial enterprises, including the 
culture of silk, but found tobacco planting to be the most 
promising of success, and he abandoned every other enter- 
prise for that. 

To encourage the culture of this plant, he issued an 
order granting to the cultivator an opportunity to become a 
proprietor of the soil, which the company, with a becoming 
liberality, not only ratified, but offered lands freely in small 
lots to settlers, and in large lots to all, (except Non- 
Conformists,) on the payment to the crown of a quit rent 
of two shillings per acre. 

He also convinced the company of the importance of 
sending over here an industrious population to form the 
basis of a prosperous colony— men of good character and 
property. This, with the liberal measures which they 
.adopted, soon had tiie desired effect. Emigrants, at the 
rate of a thousand a year, commenced pouring into the 
colony, a large number of whom were men of property, 
and standing, and the rage for raising tobacco became such 
that everj^body went into it. The fields, the gardens, the 
public squares, and even the streets of Jamestown were 
planted with it ; and such was the eagerness of the colo- 
nists to engage in its culture, that they pushed far out into 
the wilderness, unmindful of the danger from the Indians, 
to clear up tracts of land to be planted in tobacco, and in a 
few years the culture of this plant not only became an 
-established industry, but a staple production and the 
currency of the colony. 

Such was the excessive quantity of tobacco raised, 
that the price fell to almost notliing. Acts were passed by 



30 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

the Colonial Legislature to prevent any planter from raising 
more than a certain amount to each hand employed, and 
this was to be inspected, and after all of inferior quality 
had been rejected, the balance was divided into two equal 
parts, and one ot them was burned. Thus it was expected 
that the quantity of tobacco offered for sale would be so 
small that the merchants would be glad to pay better 
prices for it, and the planters would be relieved from their 
embarrassments. 

Another method of relief was adopted. The Legis- 
lature ordered that all creditors should be satisfied to take 
forty pounds for every hundred due them, and that no man 
should be legally held to perform more than half of any 
contract he had made about freighting tobacco. So it 
appears that the practice of repudiation is no new thing 
with the people ofYirginia; tliat it extends back to the 
time when it was a British colony; but they have improved 
in recent years on what they did then, by repudiating the 
whole of what they owe, instead of a part. 

There are large tracts of country where once were raised 
luxuriant crops of tobacco, now grown up to dense and 
solitary forests of pine, through which one may travel day 
after day, and at distances of five and ten miles apart may 
be seen the remains of the plantation buildings, and the 
old chimneys, standing like solitary sentinels in the silence 
and gloom that prevail, telling the passing stranger the 
story of the proud aristocratic families who once lived there; 
of the scenes of gaiety and mirth; of visiting and feasting, 
music and dancing, playing cards and drinking liquors of 
costliest brand, and growing tobacco, as if they never were 
to end, but from which no sound but the barking of the 
fox at midnight, or the melancholy hoot of the owl is now 
to be heard. 

Beverly, in his history of Virginia, speaks as- follows- 
of these old time Yirginians: 



THE UNITED STATES. 31 

"They depend upon the liberality of Nature, without endeavoring 
to improve its gifts by art or industry. They sponge upon the bless- 
ings of a warm sun and a fruitful soil, and almost grudge the pains of 
gathering in the bounties of the earth. I should be ashamed to pub- 
lish this slothful indolence of my countrymen, but that I hope it will 
some time or other rouse them out of their lethargy and excite them 
to make the most of all their happy advantages which Nature has 
given them ; and if it does this, I am sure they will have the goodness 
to forgive me. 

The families, being all together in country seats, have their 
graziers, seedsmen, gardeners, brewers, bakers, butchers, and cooks 
within themselves. They have plenty and variety of provisions for 
their tables, and as for spicery and other things that the country don't 
produce, they have constant supplies from England. They pretend 
to have their meals served up as nicely as if they were in London, and 
import from that country all their furniture, though their country is 
overrun with wood. They have their clothes of all sorts frona 
England." 

Garland, in his life of John Randolph (page 6) says, 
*'that the estates of these gentlemen of ample fortunes, 
liberal education, polished manners, and refined hospitality, 
have passed mto other hands, and the wild pine, and the 
broom sedge have grown up in the place of fruitful fields, 
and that a statne of Niobe in her own capital weeping 
for her children would be no unfit emblem of Old Vir- 
ginia, her sons gone, her hearths cold, the fields desolate.'^ 

Great numbers of emigrants, principally single men^ 
were coming in at this time from England, and there was 
a great demand among them for wives, but they did not 
take as kindly to the Indian girls, as our soldiers and 
frontiersmen do now. They were not willing to take the 
risk of being tomahawked, or of having their hair. raised by 
an irate Indian wife on the slightest provocation, and ap- 
plied to the colonial treasurer. Sir Edwin Sandys, to bring 
over marriageable girls from England as wives for them. 
The treasurer seeing clearly enough that the basis of the 
State's welfare was family life, and that the great want 
of the colony was women, and that the settlers could not 
be prevailed upon to form familj^ alliances with the natives. 



32 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

made aiTangemeiits to bring over girls from England for 
wives for them. 

In 1619 lie brought over his iirst installment of ninety 
"young and virtuous girls," and they were received with 
especial favor, and socm disposed of by being married 
either to the company's servants, or to men well able to 
defray the expenses of their transportation and support 
them comfortably. 

There were twelve hundred other emigrants who came 

over from England that year. The "young and virtuous 

maides" continued to be sent out in installments, and 

linally the company ventured upon the exportation of a 

widow. In 1621, the good ship Marniaduke, westward 

bound, contained a party of ladies, invoiced and accounted 

for in the following extract from an official lettei': 

''We send you in this shipp one wkidow and eleven maids for 
'wives for the people of Virginia; there liath been especiali care had in 
the choise of them, for there hath not any one of them been received 
but uppon good commendation, as by a noat herewith sent you may 
perceive; we pray you all therefore in generall to take them into your 
.care^ and more especially we recommend them to you, Mr. Pounters, 
ithat of their first landing they must be housed, lodged and fed, and 
provided for of diet till ihey be marryed, for such was the haste of 
sendiiag them away, as that straightened with time we had no means to 
putt provisions aboard, which defect shall be supplied by the maga- 
zine shipp; and in case they can not be presently marryed we desire 
they be put to several householders that have wives until they may 
1)6 paoyided of liusbands. There are neare iiftie more which are 
shortly to come, we sent by our most honorable Lord William, the 
Earle of Southampton, and certain worthy gentlemen, who taking 
4nto their consideration that the plantation can never flourish till 
families be planted and the respect of wives and children fix the peo- 
ple in the soyle; therefore having given this faire beginning for the 
reimbursing of whose charges, itt is ordered that every man that 
marries them give 1201b waight of the best leaf tobacco for each of 
them, and in case any of them dye that proportion must be advanced 
to make it upp to uppon those that survive; and this certainly is sett 
down for that price sett uppon the boys sent last year being 201b 
■which was so much money out of purse here, there was returned 661b 
of tobacco only and that of the worst and basest so that fraight and 
^shrinkage reckoned together with the baseness of the comoditie there 



THE UNITED STATES. 33 

"was not half returned, wliich injury the company is sensible of as 
they demand restitution, which accordingly must be had of them that 
took uppon them the dispose of them the rather that no man may 
mistake himself in accompting tobacco to be 3s. sterling contarj^ to 
express orders. And though we are desirous that marriadge be free 
according to the law of Nature, yett under vow not have those maids 
deterred and married servants but only to such freemen or tenants as 
have means to maintain them; we pray you therefore to be fathers to 
them in this business not enforcing them to marry against their wills; 
neither send we them to be servants but in case of extermitie, for 
we would have their conditions so much bettered as multitudes may 
be allured thereby to come unto you; and you may assure such men 
as marry those women that the first servants sent over by the com- 
pany shall be consigned to them, it being our intent to preserve 
families and proper married men before single persons. The tobacco 
that shall be due upon the marriage of these maides we desire Mr. 
Pountcrs to receive and return by the first as also the little quantities 
of Pitzarn Kock and Pieces of Ore the copie of whose bill is here 
returned."' 

A moil til after the above letter was written, thirty- 
eight more maids were sent out, according to promise, by 
the Tyger^ for the purpose of making up, together wdth 
those sent by the the Mannaduke^ the number of fifty. 
In this case the accompanying letter or invoice inclosed a 
carefully prepared statement of the character of each maid. 
This was for the satisfaction of the persons who were to 
marry them. It w^as also desired that great care should 
be used by those having the business in charge that none 
of the maids fall to the lot of unworthy men, or those 
unable to pay down on the spot the allotted portion of 
tobacco. If, however, such a calamity did occur, or an 
imprudent maid insisted upon bestowing herself upon an 
irresponsible individual, then the debt was to be remem- 
bered against him, and collected at the first opportunity. 

The company expressed an anxious solicitude that the 
maids should be 

''received with the same Christian pietie as they were sent from 
hence; the providing for them attheire first landing, and disposing of 
them in marriage (wch is or chiefe intent), we leave to yr care and 
wisdome to take that order as may most conduce to their good and 
sattisfaccon of the Adventurers, for the charges disbursed in setting 



34 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

them forth which come to twelve poumls and upwards, they Require- 
one hundred and fiftie of the best leafe tabacco for each; and if any of 
them dye there must be a poportionable addition uppon the rest; this, 
increase of thirty pounds weight since those sent in the MarmadukCy. 
they have resolved to make, finding the great shrinkage and other 
losses upon the tobacco from Virginia will not beare leasse, wch to- 
bacco as it shall be received, we desire shall be delivered to Mr. Ed." 
Blany, who is to keepe thereof a particular accompt." 

The tobacco bouglit wives proved an inestimable bless- 
in.^ to the colony. ''Nothing," writes one of our his- 
torians, "tended so effectually to restrain the reckless, 
spirit and unsettled habits of the colonists as the introduc- 
tion of so many women among them. The debt for as, 
wife was a debt of honor, and took precedence of any 
other. Married men were regarded by the company as. 
the better and more reliable portion of the community, 
and favored accordingly." There can be no question that 
Sir Edwin Sandys' wise measure served to establish the 
colony upon a permanent basis. The formation of domes- 
tic attachments, the beauty of the climate, a personal 
interest in the soil, and the peaceful bearing of the sur- 
rounding Indians gradually excited the desire in many to 
end their days in a land which offered a comfortable 
subsistance to ordinary industry, and numerous facilities 
for the rearing of a family. 

A system of kidnapping was quite extensively carried 
on by a class of men in England called "spirits," who 
decoyed people on board of vessels bound for America, and 
these, on their arrival here, were sold to the highest bidder, 
under the plausable pretext of paying their passage, which: 
was about $40 or $50, and they were then bound or in- 
dentured to the purchaser for a stated time until they had: 
worked out this debt, and in law they stood, to the pur- 
chaser in the relation of a debtor rather than a slave; but 
advantage was often taken of the men thus brought here,, 
and they were sold at prices ranging t>.om,$2D0 to $500.,., 



THE UNITED STATES. 3^ 

and the indenture which limited this time of bondage soon 
came to be as often disregarded as observed, and perpetual 
service followed. 

Prisoners of war in England were reduced to slavery 
and sold. Criminals and debtors were added to the num-- 
ber, and unfortunate gamesters who had staked their 
liberty. — Henry'^s History of England. 

There were also hereditary slaves who derived their 
condition from their parents, and who were sold and trans- 
ferred from hand to hand. The lowest class of people in 
England were abject and unprivileged, and sold as slaves.. 
— Chamber's History of Laws. 

The grandmother of Benjamin Eranklin was a white 
slave. Her name was Mary Morrill. She belonged to 
the famous Hugh Peters, who came to America in 1635.- 
Peter Folger purchased her of Peters for £20, and she 
became his wife, and the daughter that she bore him 
became the mother of Benjamin Franklin. — Parker'^ s 
Historic Americans^ p. W, 

In addition to this source of supply for slave labor, the 
king granted a charter to a company of London merchants 
to kidnap negroes on the coast of Africa, and bring out and. 
sell to the planters. This trade in Negroes had been; 
carried on for many years by British subjects in an irreg- 
ular way. John Hawkins was the first Englishman to 
engage in it, who as early as 1562, took out cargoes of 
negroes to the Spanish colonies, where he sold them, and 
brought back to England a return cargo of hides, ginger,, 
and sugar. The Yirginia planters had a great dislike to 
negroes, not only on account of race and color, but they 
cost them more than white slaves, and it was very doubtful' 
if they would be as profitable. 

In 1620, the same year that the puritans landed in^ 
New England, a Dutch man of war, having on board a. 
cargo of negroes for slaves, sailed up the James river.. 



.•36 POLITICAL HISTOEY OF 

Kobody wanted to buy the Dutchman's "niggers" at any 
price, but he finally succeded in trading off twenty of them 
conditionally, and left them with the planters on trial. 
This was the commencement of negro slavery in the 
United States. So strong was the prejudice against 
negroes, that the traffic went on very slowly, so that in 1660, 
forty years afterwards, they did not amount to one in filly 
of the population. 

I^ot withstanding the large numbers of convicts, and 
idle and dissolute persons that proprietors were bringing 
over here, they were not drawing oif that class of popula- 
tion near as fast as it was desired, and a great meeting was 
held on the .13th of JSTovember, 1622, in St. Paul's, under 
the auspices of the king and nobility, to which the London 
Company were invited, and they numbered now one 
thousand members, to listen to an address on American 
emigration from the Rev. John Donne, the king's favorite 
preacher. He urged upon the company the importance of 
greater energy and activity in relieving England from its 
overcrowded population, and in commending them for 
what they had already done in emptying the jails and 
prisons, and as an encouragement for still further and 
greater eflforts in transporting the criminal classes, said: 

"It shall redeem many a wretch from the jaws of death— from the 
hands of the executioner. It shall sweep your streets and wash your 
doors from idle persons, and employ them; and truly, if the whole 
country (America) is such a Bridewell, to force the idle persons to 
work, it has a good use. It is already a spleen to drain the ill 
humors of the body." 

The London Company were decidedly opposed to 
continuing the shipping of criminals to their colony. 
They thought they had already too many of that class for 
the good of their colony, and they desired to make it some- 
thing better than what the king's preacher had termed it: 
'*a spleen to draw the ill humors of the body" of England. 
The king insisted on the fulfillment of the conditions on 



THE UNITED STATES. ST 

which they held the grant. They answered that they had 
done so. The king then appointed a committee to investi- 
gate their affairs. The commissioners reported according to- 
the king's wishes; but the company made so stubborn a. 
light that another committee was appointed, and shortly 
after it had been sent to Virginia the king caused a 
qico iiyirranto to be issued against the company, and the 
trial came on during the Trinity Term, in 162tl:. But the 
case was already prejudged, and before the end of the term 
Lord Chief Justice \j<dy declared a judgment which con- 
fiscated the charter of the company to the king, and from, 
that time until the war for independence Virginia was 
under the government of the Crown and Parliament. The 
king had avowed his purpose of framing a code of laws for 
the colony, but his death, in March, 1625, put a stop ta 
that project, and he was succeeded by his son, Charles I. 



•38 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 



CHAPTER III. 



Reorganization of the Plymouth company — Arrival of the English 
Puritans in Maesachusetts — The Massachusetts Bay company — 
Colonization of New Netherlands and New Jersey by the Dutch; 
Delaware by the Swedes; Pennsylvania by the English, Irish, 
and Germans; Maryland by the English and Irish Roman Cath- 
olics—The great Civil War in England— The partisans of the 
King, called Cavaliers, emigrate to Virginia, and the partisans of 
the Commonwealth, to New England— War opened between the 
Northern and Southern Colonies — Execution of the King — Estab- 
lishment of the Protectorate of Cromwell — 20,000 Irish and Scotch 
soldiers and country people sold as slaves to the West India and 
Southern planters— Shipment of Irish people to New England by 
British slave merchants. 

Nothing more was heard of Captain John Smith after 
leaving Virginia in 1609, till about 1611, when he made a 
visit to the west of England, where the members of the 
late Plymouth company resided, in order to persuade them 
to reorganize and resume their' work of colonizing 'New 
England. After several months of labor he succeeded in 
effecting a reorganization, consisting in all of forty mem- 
bers, some of whom belonged to the household and gov- 
ernment of the king, persons of great wealth and influence, 
and without whom it is doubtful if they would ever have 
been able to obtain a renewal of their charter, as the Lon- 
don company, jealous of competition, were striving to 
engross all the profits to be derived from the American 
trade. As it was, they kept the Plymonth company out of 
it for two years ; and while this struggle was going on 
between the two companies, the one to obtain a charter and 
the other to keep them out of it, Smith, meantime, in 



THE UNITED STATES. 39 

partnership with four London merchants, made one or two 
voyages to our northeast coast as an adventure, which 
proved to be very successful. He drew a map of the coast, 
and named the country New England, which name it has 
•ever since borne. 

About this time the puritans in the north of England 
had become so outspoken in the advocacy of their advanced 
ideas in religion and politics as to incur the hostility both 
of the church and the king, and were forced to leave the 
•country. They at first emigrated to Holland, which 
country had become a republic in 1606 ; but after a few 
years they became so dissatisfied with what they called 
the dissolute manners of the Dutch, and fearing the influ- 
ence of Dutch habits on their children, that they were 
anxious to get away, and made application to the Virginia 
company for a tract of land in that colony to settle on ; and 
through the influence of Sir Edwin Sandys, who was a 
friend of the puritans, a patent was granted to them, under 
the seal of the company, conceding to them all they asked 
for in the way of civil and religious liberty; but the patent, 
having been taken in the name of one who did not accom- 
pany the colony here, was never of any use to them. 

These puritans were a different class of people from 
those who had hitherto been emigrating to Virginia, and 
the company was ver}^ anxious to get them. They were an 
•industrious and frugal class, and, besides those who were 
bred to the pursuits of husbandry, there were many good 
mechanics among them ; and in order to secure so good a 
lot of emigrants, the Virginia company was willing to 
grant them all the religious and political privileges which 
they asked. 

The Dutch also v/anted them to emigrate to their 
colony on Manhattan Island (now the city of Kew York), 
and it is said an arrangement was made before leaving 
Holland, for them to emigrate to Manhattan. 



40 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

There were several hundred persons in all, and to 
bring over this number two ships were chartered, the May- 
flower, and the Speedwell ; but when the time came to 
embark there were only one hundred and one persons ready 
to emigrate to the new world, and one ship was sufficient 
to accommodate them all, and these embarked on board 
the Mayflower on the 6th of September, 1620. The 
Plymouth company had not yet obtained their charter, but 
they got it in N^ovember, two months after the Mayflower 
had sailed. They were sixty-three days at sea, and on 
landing found themselves neither in the colony of Virginia, 
nor in that of the Dutch at the moutli of the Hudson, but 
on the sterile coast of Massachusetts, having drifted there, 
as they claimed, through the ignorance or willfulness of the 
captain of the vessel. They had made no arrangements 
to locate here, and did not know who the rightful parties 
were to negotiate with — the Indians, English, French, or 
Spanish. The PI}' mouth company had only come into 
possession of their patent to this section of the country 
about a month previous, but the puritans had not heard of 
that ; neither did the company know of the landing of their 
exiled countrymen on their soil. They did not like the 
country on account of the severity of the climate and the 
rocky, sterile soil ; but it was better than anything they 
had hitherto found, and with all its disadvantages of soil 
and climate, and the hostility of the natives, they resolved 
to stop here, land their household gods, and plant- a 
nation. (1) From that time Plymouth Pock became a con- 

1. A long series of events, most touching in tlieir character, forming one 
of the most interesting and instructive chapters in human history, culminated 
in the landing of the pilgrims upon Plymouth Rock. Here was planted a 
luture empire. At the first— one hundred— all told. Yet here was the germ 
of institutions that shall spread in a widening circle, tiU all the lands and 
climes shall own their power. When the pilgrims left the Mayflower, 
poverty was alike the portion of all, and as they stepped upon the houseless 
shore on a December morning, to all hunlan appearances, they were going to 
their doom. While yet aboard the Mayflower, a solemn covenant was drawn 
up and signed in these memorable words: ''We do by these presents, 
solemnly and mutually, in the presence ot God and one another, covenant 
and combine ourselves together, into a civil body politic, for our better order- 
ing and preservation, and furtherance of the eiids aioresaid, and by virtue 



THE UNITED STATES. 41 

secrated spot, and is now visited annually by hundreds of 
people from various parts of the civilized world. " As they 
landed," says Bancroft, "their institutions were already 
perfected ; democratic liberty and independent Christian 
worship existed in America." Tlieir residence in that 
cold, sterile country was attended with great hardship, but 
it was only for a few years. By their industry, frugality 
and enterprise they overcame the obstacles of nature, pro- 
vided against the rigors of the climate, and, cheered by an 
abundant harvest, affluence and happiness followed. 

He further says of their state of society and the purity 
of their morals, that "one might live among them from 
year to year and never see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or 
meet a beggar. The consequence was unusual health and 
such a duration of life that more than two in ten of all that 
were born attained the age of seventy years, and of those 
who lived beyond ninety, the proportion, as compared with 
European tables of longevity, was still more remarkable. "^ 

The remarkable prosperity which attended the settle- 
ment of this colony in the woods, in so short a time, was 
not entirely due to their good character, industry, and 
frugality, but to the cooperation and assistance of the 
Massachusetts colony, which came here nine years later 

hereof do enact, constitute, and frame such just, and equal Jaws, ordinances,, 
acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time as shall be thought most 
meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we 
promise aU due submission and obedience." Thus all tlie essentials for a 
prosperous nation stood face to lace with the possibilities of the future. An 
unquestioning faith and trust in God— intelligence. Industry, economy, and 
a solemn agreement to obey all wholesome regulations for the public good. 
These are the rock foundaiions of every republican state. Here is the germ, 
of democratic equality in government— a tree whose leaves ar*- for the heal- 
ing of the nations. Here was the beginning of a civilization new to the world, 
and perhaps the greatest bequest puritanlsm has left in all its liistory. Emi- 
gration from the old world rolled on in an increasing flood, unlike in thought, 
purpose, and character, forming distinct channels of emigration, clean cut 
in their outlines like the waters of the Rhone that run through the Rhine to 
the gulf— or the gulf stream that pursues its stalely course, a mighty river in 
the ocean— from Jupiter inlet, till it dashes itself against the icebergs that 
come down from the long sought north pole— the separatist, and puritan, 
drifted to the shores of New England, while the convict and cavalier sought 
the more congenial clime of the South But those whose rugged inpepend- 
ance of character despised alike the trappings of royal splendor and feudal 
lord, would make their dwelling places in the hills of New England. Thus 
U will be seen that all the influences we can imagine that could form and 
shape a self reliant character, were brought to bear upon the puritan, in hia 
u^ew home.— Adress of George Tomilson, Esq., of N. Y. 



42 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

and furnislied them tlie capital to work with. It was that 
which started them in tlieir prosperous career. This 
Massachusetts col'>ny were largely the descendants of the 
nobility — men of rank, wealth and culture — and the object 
-of their emigration was to escape the impending revohition 
•which they foresaw under the ill starred reign of Charles I. 
Fifteen hundred of these people came over in one year, 
and brought their wealth with them. The celebrated John 
Endicott ^nd Governor Winthrop belonged to this colony. 
On their arrival here they assimilated with the puritans, 
and aided them in the prosecution of their industrial enter- 
prises, and following out what they believed to be for the 
best interest of the colony, free schools, the orthodox Con- 
gregational church, and popular government became the 
distinguishing feature of their social and political economy. 

Within fifteen years after the landing of this colony of 
Puritans, (and there was never afterwards any consider- 
able increase from England), there came over twenty-one 
thousand two hundred persons, or four thousand families, 
and their descendants have spread over and settled in all 
the Middle and Western States, carrying with them, 
wherever they went, their principles of free schools, free 
government, and free men. 

In 1609 the famous English sailor, Henry Hudson, 
in command of the Dutch ship Tlalfmoori^ came to an 
anchor in the bay of New York, discovered the mouth ot 
Hudson river, to which he gave his own name, and then 
explored it as far up as Albany, and took possession of the 
country in the name of the Dutch government, and gave it 
the name of "New Netherlands." In 1621, the next 
year after the landing of the puritans at Plymouth, the 
great Dutch West India company was chartered for the 
purpose of trade, and the settlement of the country. 
They brought over a colony that year consisting of perse- 
cuted French protestants, called Huguenots; other colo- 



THE UNITED STATES. 43 

iiies followed, and in 1625 New Netherlands was erected 
into a province. Westward the star of empire was moving, 
and the settlement of New Jersey and New Netherlands 
by the Dutcli was followed by the settlement of Delaware 
by the Swedes; Pennsylvania by the English, Irish, and 
Germans; and Maryland by the English and Irish Roman 
catholics. 

During the latter years of the reign of King James a 
great change had been taking place in English public 
opinion in mattei's both religious and political. The Bible 
had been translated into the English language, and was 
finding its way into the hands of the people, and they 
were not only becoming protestant, and uniting in their 
demands tor s^reater religious freedom, but in political 
matters the idea of the right of the people to a voice in all 
matters of government had obtained a very strong hold 
npon the English mind. When Charles I. came to the 
English throne on the death of his father, in 1625, he 
undertook to repress this growing spirit of civil and relig- 
ious fieedora, and brought on a conflict which not only 
cost him his life, but stripped the Stuart dynasty, and their 
succsssors, of the power that had for centuries inhered in 
the crown. 

The Roman catholics wei'e generally his partisans, 
and that portion of the church of England who followed 
Bishop Laud, called cavillers. Thej were aiming to carry 
the church of England back to the old position. Green, 
the historian, says of them: 

'•They aped Roman ceremonies. Cautiously and tentatively they 
were introducing Roman doctrine. Bat they had none of the sacer- 
dotal independence which Rome had, at any rate, preserved. They 
were abject in their dependence on the crown. Their gratitude for 
the royal protection wliich enabled them to defy the religious instincts 
of the realm showed itself in their erection of the most dangerous pre- 
tensions of the monarchy into religious dogmas. Their model, Bishop 
Andrews, had declared James to have been inspired by God. They 
preached passive obedience to the worst tyranny. They declared the 



44 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

person and goods of the subject to be at the king's absolute disposal. 
They were turning religion into a systematic attack on English lib- 
erty."' 

There were also a large number who would have been 
glad to avoid the issue between the king and parliament, 
and waited to see which party would triumph, so as to join 
the winning side; there was also a very large class, such as 
we had in this country daring the rebellion, who had not 
intelligence enough to apprehend what the points of the 
controversy were, and they took the side of the king, a& 
the same class here did the side of the rebels. One of the 
most important results of this controversy was the impulse 
it gave to immigration and the settlement of these colonies. 
Political opinions here were shaped very much by the course 
of events in England, and they took a sectional character 
for the North or South, as between the puritans and the 
cavillers. In New England the people were puritan, and 
they espoused the cause of parliament against the king and 
his partisans, and all the enemies of the king and the 
Eoman church went there; while the adherents of the mon- 
archy went to Virginia, and emigi'ated to that colony in 
such large numbers as to crowd it ports with vessels engag- 
ed in bringing them over. Upon their arrival the Virginians 
welcomed them with the most unbounded hospitality. 

"Every house was a shelter and every planter a friend." 

In 1627 several ship loads of children, amounting to 
many thousand, were sent over by the British government 
and distributed all over the colony of Virginia. They were 
orphans, and street waifs, and the offspring of the intem- 
perate, idle, and vicious, and the poor who were not 
vicious, but unable to take care of them. In the Court and 
Times of Charles I, Vol. 1, p. 262, there is a letter from 
Rev. Joseph Meade to Sir Martin Stuteville, saying that 
''there are many ships now going to Virginia, and witli 
them some 1400 or 1500 children which they have gather- 
ed up in divers places" in England, Ireland and Scotland.. 



THE UNITED STATES. 45 

It would be interesting to know to wliat extent they grew 
up to be tlie first families of Virginia, and the ancestry of 
the southern bourbon of the present time. 

In 1628, the Lord Baron of Baltimore (Sir George 
Calvert) came to Virginia for the purpose of making 
arrangements for settling a large number of Irish catholics; 
but he was required, as a preliminary settlement, to 
subscribe to the oath of allegiance and supremacy, 
and, refusing to comply, was not allowed to settle in 
the colony. Then he applied to the king for the grant of 
a special territory in which to settle his catholic colony, 
and in the month of June, 1632, the province of Maryland 
was given to him and his heirs forever for that purpose. 

Virginia was very much opposed to the settlement of 
this class of population on her border, and on the arrival 
of the first shipment, February 2Y, 1634, at Old Point 
Comfort (Fortress Monroe), would have driven them away 
without permission to land had they not been protected by 
letters from the king and the chancellor of the exchequer. 
Father White, one of the Jesuits who came in charge of 
the colony, says in his journal: 

"We reached what they call Point Comfort, in Virginia, full of 
fear least the English inhabitants, to whom our plantation is very 
objectionable, should plot some evil against us. While on our voyage 
here we spent a day at Monserrat, one of the Caribbee islands, and 
found it inhabited by Irishmen who had been expelled by the Eng- 
lish of Virginia on account of their profession of the Catholic faith; 
but letters which we brought from the king and the chancellor of the 
exchequer to the governor of these regions served to conciliate their 
minds and enable us to obtain those things which were useful to us." 
— Peter Force's Tracts, vol. 4, pp. 17 and 18, article " White's Belation.** 

These Maryland catholics were harassed and raided 
upon for many years by the Virginians, and were constant- 
ly in fear for their lives. In 1646, Father White says in 
his journal that 

"there were in the neighborhood certain soldiers, unjust plunderers, 
English indeed by birth, of the orthodox faith, who, coming the year 



46 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

before with a fleet, had invaded with arms almost the entire colony; 
had plundered, burnt, and finally, having abducted the priests and 
driven the governor himself into exile, had reduced it to a miserable 
servitude." 

And in 1656 lie says: 
"During the past year our people in Maryland have escaped 
grievous dangers, and have had to contead with great difficulties and 
straits, and have sutfered many unpleasant things, as well from ene- 
mies as our own people. The English who inhabit Virginia had 
made an attack on the colonists, themselves being Englishmen, too, 
and, safety being guaranteed on certain conditions, received indeed 
the governor of Maryland, with many others, in surrender, but the 
conditions being treacherously violated, four of the captives, and three 
of them being Catholics, were pierced with leaden balls." 

* Under these circumstances the Marjdand catholics 
proclaimed a free toleration of religious opinion, and made 
no resistance to men of the heterodox faith settling among 
them. They dared not do otherwise. Had they attempt- 
ed to carry out the intolerant and proscriptive spirit of 
their church, they would have been so completely cleaned 
out of Maryland that no man would have been left to tell 
the story of their extermination; but they make loud 
boasts now and claim great credit to themselves for having 
been the first religious body to proclaim religious freedom 
in America. 

On the breaking out of the Kevolutionary war, against 
England, in the colonies, the Irish Roman catholics of 
Maryland took sweet revenge on their old English hered- 
itary enemies in Yirginia. They joined the northern 
colonies against them, and never omitted an opportunity 
for making raids upon them, and burning their plantations, 
and stampeding their negroes. 

In 1634 the king gave to the Archbishop of Canterbury 
and associates full power over the American plantations 
to establish their church government, and to revoke any 
charter which conceded liberties prejudicial to the royal 
prerogative. By means of this charter the church ulti- 
mately got entire control of public affairs, but, owing to 



THE UNITED STATES. 47 

the terrible civil war then in progress in England, they 
did not exercise it during its continuance; and, as both the 
king and parliament had all they could attend to at homey 
the colonies here were allowed to run their governments 
pretty much as they pleased, and during that time Virginia 
enjoyed a very large share of popular liberty. Thix)ugli 
the liberality of the royal governor legislative assemblies 
were held, the members of which were elected by popular 
suffrage, which was extended to all freemen: none other 
were allow^ed to vote; and this practice continued long 
after the execution of King Charles. 

When Cromwell came into power he was desirous of 
making friends of these Virginians, and he never interfered 
with them. No governor ever acted under his commission. 

During the protectorateof Cromwell there was a large 
importation of white slaves into the colony. On the sur- 
render of the Irish army to General Ireton, "the prisoners," 
says the historian, "were oifered very fair and reasonable 
terms by parliament, but they woidd not accept them. 
They would not," they said, "live under the rule of 
regicides who had murdered their king," and asked leave 
to quit the country. Cromwell granted their request, and 
many of them embarked for France and Spain. Those, 
however, whom age and infirmity rendered unable to ac- 
company them were treated with the most savage barbarity. 
From fourteen thousand to twenty thousand, both soldiers 
and country people, were transported to America and sold 
as slaves, as likewise were the Scotch prisoners belong- 
ing to the army of Charles 11. , taken b}^ Cromwell at the 
battle of Worcester. — Mac Geoghegan'' s History of Ireland y 
p. 680. 

The Plymouth company, in order to build up their 
colony, which needed population and laborers, made a 
large importation of L'ish into New England, between 
1640 and 1650. They cleaned out the jails and poorhouses, 



48 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

and Preiidergast says in his history of the Cromwellian 
settlement of Ireland, 2d edition, Dublin, 1875, p. 90, that 
'*the commissioners of Ireland gave the Plymouth com- 
pany orders upon the governors of garrisons to deliver to 
them prisoners of war; upon masters of work houses for 
the destitute in their care, who w^ere of an age to labor, 
or, if women, were of marriageable age, and not past 
breeding; and gave directions to all in authority to sieze 
those who had no visible means of support and deliver 
them to Messrs. Sellick and Leader, Mr. Robert Youmans, 
Mr. Joseph Lawrence, and others, all of Bristol, and 
active agents of the British slave merchants." Cap- 
tain John Yernon, he further says, made a contract on 
behalf of the commissioners in Ireland with Mr. Daniel 
Sellick and Mr. Leader, under his hand bearing date 
September, 14, 1653, to supply them ''with two hun- 
dred and fifty Irish women, abc)ve twelve years and 
under forty-live; also, three hundred men, above twelve 
and under fifty years ot age, to be found in the county 
within twenty miles of Cork, Yougliol, Kinsale, Water- 
ford, and Wexford, to transport them intt) IS^ew England." 

This was but one contract, among many, for infusing 
the native Celtic blood of the south of Ireland into the 
Anglo Saxon population of ]S"ew England. These English 
firms of slave dealers became largely engaged in the busi- 
ness of sending the Irish over here. The Rev. Augustus 
Thebaud says in his book, entitled ''The Irish Race in the 
Past and Present," that in four years "it is calculated that 
they had shipped 6,400 Irish men and women, boys, and 
maidens, to the British colonies of North America." 

At a grand assembly, held at James City, Virginia, 
on the 10th of October, 1649, the colony of Yirginia, by 
its first act, declared the decapitation of Cliarles I. treason, 
in denying the divine right ot kings, and theref(n-e enacted 
^'that to defend the regicides by reasoning, discourse, or 



THE UNITED STATES. 49 

^argument, was to be accessory after the fact to the death 
•of the king; that to asperse his memory should be punish- 
able at the discretion of the governor, Sir William Berkley, 
and the council; that to doubt the right of succession of 
Charles II, should be deemed high treason; and that to 
propose a change of government should be equally high 
treason." 

This was a bold outlawing of the Protector, and he 
sent commissioners in 1651 to reduce Virginia to obedience, 
to whom the colony surrendered in articles agreed upon 
.and signed at "James Cittie" declaring "that the planta- 
tion of Virginia and all the inhabitants thereof shall be 
and remain in due obedience and subjection to the com- 
monwealth of England." There were eleven articles 
f?igned and countersigned; and then there were other 
articles agreed upon; among them was one to save the 
pride of Virginia, by allowing them to say that these 
articles were voluntary, not forced; that one year shall 
be allowed for the removal of all malcontents, with their 
effects; and that they were not to be censured for praying 
for the son and heir to the throne, or speaking well of their 
beheaded king. 

Notwithstanding their surrender, their loyalty to 
Charles II. remained unshaken. Though in exile at Breda, 
the sovereign was so much gratified by their manifestations 
of attachment to himself and the overthrown monarchy, 
the "lost cause" of that time, that he sent Governor 
Berkley, (a relative of the Irish Bishop Berkley) a renewal 
of his commission, and recommended candidates for him 
to appoint to the various offices in the colony; but he never 
sent a governor to Massachusetts, even after his restor- 
ation. Had he done so, the various towns and churches 
throughout that colony were resolved to oppose him. — 
JBancToffs Colonial IIisto7'y^ ])- 



50 POLITICAL HISTOKY OF 



CHAPTEE lY. 



Restoration of the Stewart d3aiasty — Bacon's rebellion in Virginia — 
Migration from Virginia southward, into the wilderness — Admix- 
ture of races, whites, Negroes and Indians — De Foe's romance of 
Moll Flanders in Virginia — How felons from Newgate and 
Bridewell became great men on emigrating here — The new colony 
of the "Eight Lord Proprietors," on the south of Virginia- 
Contract to supply the colonies with Negro slaves— Arrival of the 
French Huguenots, and their settlement in South Carolina— Ar- 
rival of the first German colony in Pennsylvania. 

In 1660 Charles II. was restored to the English throne 
amidst the great rejoicings of the people. Virginia sent 
him, as a present, a robe made from silk grown in that 
colony. This he wore at his coronation, and that was all 
the recognition Virginia ever got from him for all her 
loyalty and obsequious devotion to his person and cause- 
As a man, there was scarcely one trait in his character 
that was not infamous. His whole life was a scene of 
licentiousness and debauchery, with an aversion to busi- 
ness and a devotion to his pleasures, making his reign in 
many respects more unfortunate and disastrous, besides 
being disgraceful, to the people of the kingdom and of 
these colonies than had been that of his father. Rigorous 
prosecutions were carried on against all who spoke of the 
irregularity of his morals and the licentiousness of his 
court. Exorbitant lines were imposed, and not unfrequently 
perpetual imprisonment was the late of the accused, and 
the renewal of party strife threatened all the violent 
political convulsions of the time of Cromwell. To effec- 
tually put down opposition he aspired to autocratic power. 
Encouraged in so doing by the Tories, the Whigs were 
intimidated into a compliance with his demands, and "the^ 



THE UNITED STATES. 51 

English nation then peaceably surrendered all its rights- 
and privileges, the acquisition and preservation of which 
had cost ages of contest and oceans of blood." — BlglancVs 
History of England^ vol. ^, j?. 280. 

The people of Virginia shared the fate of the people of 
England. The church and the aristocracy had obtained 
complete control in Virginia, and all popular rights were 
suppressed. ''The king now turned upon his obsequious 
partisans in Virginia and commenced dismembering their 
colony by lavish grants to his courtiers, till he had given 
away the whole colony for a generation as recklessly as a 
man would give away a life estate in a farm." — Bancroft's 
Colonial History^ p. 25 Jf. 

The judiciary of Virginia was reorganized so as to 
place that department of the government beyond the con- 
trol of the people, and Sir William Berkeley was now 
made governor, not, as heretofore, by the suffrages of the 
freemen, but by royal commission, and issued his writs 
for the meeting of the assembly in the name of the king 
instead of the people, as heretofore. Berkeley now writes 
an exulting letter to the king rejoicing in his achievements 
in suppressing the liberties that the people had heretofore 
enjoyed, and attributes to their ignorance the success of 
his triumph, saying: "I thank God that there are no free 
schools and no printing offices in Virginia, and I hope we 
shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has 
brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, 
and printing has divulged them and libels against the 
best government. God keep us from both." 

It was not altogether on account of the ignorance of 
the people that they had lost their liberties: they lost them 
through all the forms of liberty, and at the ballot box. 
Every freeman had an opportunity to vote, and did vote 
for the candidate of his choice; but the sheriffs, the agents 
and instruments of the aristocracy, held the ballot boxes 



52 POLITICAL HISTOEY OF 

and counted and declared the result of the ballot, and they 
always counted the votes so that none of the people's 
candidates were ever elected, but the candidates of the 
aristocracy invariably were; so that no matter how many 
votes were cast for the freeman's candidate, he never in 
any case was declared elected. The government now 
became so oppressive and intolerant that the people were 
goaded into open rebellion against it. A council of war 
was held, in which it was resolved to burn Jamestown. 
The buildings were tired at night, and the next morning 
the town was in ashes. The governor sent his troops after 
the rebels, but when they met them they fraternized with 
them. Other forces were raised, and the war continued for 
two years, when it was brought to a close by the arrival of 
a regiment of British troops. This is what is known as 
Bacon's rebellion. "The flag of freedom had been un- 
furled only to be stained with blood, and the accents of 
liberty uttered only to be choked by execution.*' — Ban- 
croft's Colonial History, p, 320. 

Maryland took advantage of these troubles in Virginia, 
and a portion of the settlers in that colony raised an 
insurrection against paying their taxes; but the execution 
of two or three of the leading malcontents stifled the further 
spreading of that flame. — Peter Force'' s Tracts, vol. 1,]). 21. 

The leaders in Bacon's rebellion were arrested, tried 
by courtmartial, and twenty two were executed. The others 
^ere pardoned. 

This rebellion furnished the ruling class with an excuse 
for refusing to allow the people to exercise any of the 
rights and privileges of freemen. The decrees of the 
■church were fulminated against the dissenters as rigorously 
as if they had emanated from Rome. The obsolete laws 
of Queen Elizabeth were revived and enforced with un- 
sparing severity, and the people were ever after kept under 
the feet of the aristocracy, supported by royal authority. 



THE UNITED STATES. 58 

Resistance was hopeless, and, tired of tlie struggle against 
the exactions of the government and the intolerance of the 
church, the people sought relief by migrating in large 
numbers into what are now North and South Carolina, 
and far out towards the Mississippi, in that trackless 
wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts and wilder men, 
where neither the colonial government nor its intolerant 
and proscriptive church could pursue and harrass them. 
Besides the freemen class a great many of the slaves, both 
black and white, escaped, and they scattered like the blows 
of the thistle down in a storm, all along the streams, 
in isolated and lonely retreats, and on the mountain 
slopes, and having no communication with civilization, 
grew up from one generation to another in all the gross- 
ness and ignorance of aboriginal barbarism. 

In 1662, forty-two years after the lirst arrival of 
negroes in Yirginia, there was discovered to be a mixed 
race growing up in the colony. There were many mulatto 
children the paternity of whom it would be disagreeable to 
inquire about; and the legislature passed a law that they 
should follow the condition of the mother instead of the 
father; and in 1692 another law was enacted to prevent 
what was called in the statute that "abominable admixture 
of the races by the intermarriage of mulattoes, negroes, 
and Indians with English or other white women, as also 
the unlawful living with one another." But the com- 
plexion and physiolofijical and other characteristics of the 
population show that the admixture of the races went on 
without much regard to the law. — H. Miller's Slavery and 
Slave Trade^ p. 375. 

Charles II. sent a ship load of quakers to Yirginia, 
where they were sold as slaves because they would not 
acknowledge his church as the true church, and their non 
resistence principles are said to have added much to their 
value. 



54 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

Some evidence of the iiotoriously bad character of the 
Yirgmia iininigration may be foimd in a novel written bv 
De Foe, in 1683, entitled "The Fortunes and Misfortunes 
of the Celebrated Moll Flanders, who was Born in New- 
gate," from wdiicli the following extracts are taken. She 
said: 

"My mother often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants 
of that colony (Virginia) came thither in very indifferent circum- 
stances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two 
sorts, either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to 
be sold as servants; or, second, such as were transported after having 
been found guilty ot crimes punishable with death. 'Depend upon 
it,' says she, 'there is more thieves and rogues made by that one 
prison of Newgate than by all the clubs and societies of villians in the 
nation.' "Tis that cursed place,' says my mother, 'that half peoples 
this colony.' (Virginia), 'Hence, child,' says she, 'many a Newgate 
bird becomes a great man, and we have,' she continued, 'several jus- 
tices of the peace, officers of the trained band, and magistrates of the 
towns they live in, that have been burned in the hand.' " 

A criminal wdio was about to be tried for life said that 
he "had some intimation that if he would submit to trans- 
port himself, he might be admitted to it without a trial, 
but he could not think of it with any temper, and thought 
he could much easier submit to be hanged." 

One of the gentry, on being "ordered to be transport- 
ed (to Virginia) in respite of the gallows," said: "The 
mortification of being brought on board like a prisoner 
piqued him very much, since it was first told that he might 
transport hijnself, so that he might go as a gentleman at 
liberty." It is true he was not ordered to be sold when 
he came there. 

Moll and her husband were both convicts, transported 
here from Newgate prison. The latter took up a planta- 
tion to raise tobacco, and became a Yikginia Gentleman. 
Moll says of him: 

"The case was plain: he was a born gentleman, and was not only 
unacquainted but indolent, and when we did settle, would rather go 
into the woods with his gun, which they call here hunting, than 
attend to the natural business of the plantation." 



THE UNITED STATES. 55 

She further says of the pLanters that the merchants ^ 
would trust them for tools and necessaries upon their crop 
before it was grown; so they again pLant every year a little 
more than the year before, and so buy everything that 
they want with tlie crop that is before them. She speaks 
of her own importations from England, as a sample of 
supplies that w^ere bi*ouglit over for the Virginia aristoc- 
racy, as follows: 

"We had by an arrival from England a supply of all sorts of 
clothes, as well for my husband as for myself, and I took special care to 
buy for him all those things which I knew he delighted to have: as 
two good long wigs, two silver hilted swords, three or four fowling 
pieces, a fine saddle with holsters and pistols, very handsome, with a 
cloak." 

The next colonial enterprise undertaken in this coun- 
try by the English was the attempt to establish a great 
southern empire, consisting of all that portion of the 
country south of Virginia to the gulf, and from the Atlantic 
to the west, without any very definite boundaiy. 

This immense tract of country was granted by Charles 
II., in 1663, to eight English noblemen, styled "The Eight 
Lords Proprietors." It was to be, in the framew^ork of its 
government and institutions, very much like that of Eng- 
land. There was to be a nobility who should owh the 
larger portion of all the lands of the colony, and constitute 
the governing power, and a middle class of small freehold- 
ers; but the main body of the people were to be serfs, to 
live on and cultivate the lands of the nobility. In addition 
to the serfs, the nobility were to work their estates with 
gangs of African slaves. The king had incorporated a 
company, with his brother at the head of it, who had 
entered into a contract to supply this colony, and Virginia, 
with three thousand African slaves annually. (1) 

1. Sir John Yeamans brought a cargo of negroes herein 1671, thus making 
negro slavery coeval with the first planting of the colony ; and Mr. Von Reck, 
who accompanied Oglethorp here with his colony of German Protestants in 
1734, speaking of the progress the people were making in settling the country, 
says in his journal : "Charleston is a fine town and enjoys an extensive trade. 
There are five negroes to one white, and there are imported generally 3,000 
fresh negroes every year. There are computed to be .30,000 negroes in this 
province, all of them slaves and their posterity forever." 



56 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

The country was already occupied — sparsely, it is true- 
— by a population which had been coming in from Virginia 
for more than thirty years. Some were runaway convict 
slaves, some indentured apprentices, and some freemen 
who had been driven out of Virginia by the tyranny of 
the government and the intolerance of tiie church. They 
owned the lands upon which they lived, some holding their 
titles under the grant of James I. to a man by the name 
of Heath, which had long since been canceled, and others 
— which constituted by far the larger portion— held their 
titles from the Indians and lived with them, faring as they 
fared, occupying in many cases the same wigwam, devoted 
to the same pursuits, taking squaws for wives, and living 
in a condition of absolute lawless independence. The 
streams and forests furnished them food, and supplied most, 
of their animal wants. 

It was not the intention of the lords proprietors to 
remove these people from the lands they occupied; all they 
designed to do was to rob them of their proprietary interest,, 
the grant of the king having made null and void all the 
titles of the settlers, from whomsoever derived. They 
were to be allowed to cultivate the lands as the serfs or leet 
men of these lords proprietors, and pay them a rent. 

Agents were employed in England, Ireland, Scotland,, 
and the West Indies to obtain immigrants for them, and 
parliament passed an act authorizing the transportation to 
this colony of all thieves, malefactors, and other jail 
delivery wherever found. Their hrst lot of immigrants 
came here in 1665 from Barbadoes and settled on the Cape 
Fear river, where they founded a town. A Scotch colony 
came over and settled in 1684, and after this a very large 
population followed from Scotland and formed extensive 
settlements in North Carolina, which was formed into a 
a separate colony in 16^71. 

Tke most important immigration they obtained — and, 
perhaps, the most important, next to the puritans, that 



THE UNITED STATES. 57 

ever came to this country — was that of the French protes- 
tants, sometimes called Huguenots, who settled principally 
in South Carolina. The king (^Charles 11.) had sent over, 
at his own expense, to that colony, in 1679, two ship-loads 
of these exiles ; and after the revocature of the edict of 
^Nantes, October 18, 1685, by which they were outlawed, 
many others came here, and their shipment was continued 
at intervals till 1752, when 1,600 came over, and twelve 
years later 200 more. The lords proprietors passed an act 
for their naturalization, and granted them lands. Similar 
acts were also passed by the' legislatures of Massachusetts, 
New York, Virginia, and Maryland, in which colonies 
they had settled in considerable numbers. Everywhere 
they were spoken of as good members of society. Enter- 
prising, sober and industrious, they acquired wealth and 
became the leaders in every important social and political 
movement, evidences of which are seen all along the course 
of our history from the time of their first coming here. In 
our earlier history we find that they were at the forefront 
in the revolution as leaders in the cause of independence; 
and among the honored names on the roll of American 
statesmen there are none more illustrious than those of 
Hamilton, Marion, Jay, and Laurens, and at a later period 
they have furnished some of our worthiest and ablest 
public men. Bowdoin College, in Maine, owes its name 
and endowment to one of their descendants; and Faneuil 
Hall, in Boston, known as the ''Cradle of Liberty," was 
a gift to that city by another descendant of these people; 
while another, the son of Judith Manigault, (Gabrille, born 
in 1704), showed his patriotic devotion to the country, as 
well as his gratitude for its having aflPorded an asylum and 
protection to his mother, by loaning to it the sum of $220,000 
for carrying on the war of the revolution, and that, too, at 
a period so early that it was extremely doubtful how the 
war would terminate. 



58 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

The lords proprietors, having organized their govern- 
ment, next attempted to put it into operation ; but in this 
tliey were met by the most determined opposition from a 
large portion of the people, who rejected their government 
absolutely and set their authority at defiance. A struggle 
ensued between the proprietors and their partisans on the 
one side, and the hostile factions on the other, which 
cuhiiinated in a civil war that was kept up intermittingly 
for fifty years. At the end of that time, having failed to 
establiSii their dominion and scheme of government, and 
seeing no prospect of any return for all their expenditures, 
and threatened with more serious trouble in tlie future by 
attacks froin the Indians and Spaniards, they gave up the 
struggle and sold out to the British government in 1719 
for a nominal sum. From this time on until the revolution, 
all that portion of the south which constituted the empire 
of the eight lords proprietors came under the direct gov- 
ernment of the crown; but England succeeded very little 
better than the lords proprietors did in governing this 
anarchical people, of whom Governor Spottswood said that 
"they had scarcely any form of government, and that 
every one did what was right in his own eyes, paying 
tribute neither to God nor Ctesar." 

To South Carolina is due the credit of being the first to 
establish the culture of rice, indigo, and cotton ; and from 
that colony all the others in the south received their first 
impulse in the culture of those staples. A vessel entering 
the port of Charleston from Madagascar accidentally 
dropped a bag of rice. This was planted for a few years 
as an experiment, and the planters were surprised at their 
success in being able to produce an article vastly superior 
to the rice grown in the east, and from that time it became 
an article of staple culture. Indigo also became a valuable 
staple, though never equal to the product of Bengal, and it 
was only finally set aside for cotton. Another source of 



THE UNITED STATES. 59 

revenne they had in kidnapping the Indians and selling 
them as slaves in the west Indies, but they lost more than 
they gained by that; for the tribes retaliated by burning 
their plantations and massacring the inhabitants. Out of 
this grew an Indian war which was carried on in a desul- 
tory manner for many years. 

While the great lords proprietors were directing all their 
energies to the establishment of their empire, and were 
bringing in from the overcrowded population of Europe all 
that they could provide transportation for, as the basis on 
whicli their dominion was to rest, wealthy people also 
came here, principally from England and Scotland, and 
not a few from Ireland, to receive their investitures of 
nobility — landgraves, caziques, &c. — in the new empire, 
and took up large tracts of land preliminary thereto. 
They settled principally along the seaboard, and devoted 
themselves to the improvement of their own per- 
sonal fortunes, and to politics. They maintained great 
palatial establishments and equipages, and lived in all the 
splendor of the nobility of Old England, after whose style 
they had built and furnished their houses. They kept 
their own carriages and drove the fleetest and most elegant 
horses, owning in some instances as many as a thousand 
of the finest breeds of English and Arabian stock. They 
had their summer houses in Charleston, coming in about 
the middle of May and remaining until about the middle 
of October; they gave grand dinners, sent their sons to 
England to be educated, and, like the Brahmin of India, 
looked down with a most withering contempt upon all the 
ordinary avocations of life and business, and upon those 
who followed them as pariahs. 

The rich merchant aped their style and manners, and 
was never seen at his store after the hour for dinner; men 
•of less wealth imitated them and indulged in expenditures 



60 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

far beyond their means, and their influence extended ta 
the inland portion of the country, where society became^ 
moulded by their example. 

They grew up into an oligarchy as easily and naturally 
as the JN'ew England puritans grew up into a republic. 
Haughty, capricious, and imperious in disposition, rec- 
ognizing no law but that of their own caste, and 
being owners of the property, they established a blood 
and iron rule that has come down to the present time, 
never more rigorously executed than it has been during 
the past twenty years. 

There was another immigration that commenced about 
this time which has had a greater influence in developing 
the resources of the country, and giving shape and vigor 
to its institutions, than all others combined, (excepting- 
that from England), and that was the immigration from 
Germany. Other nationalities have given some of the 
best of men and women to enrich this country, but none so 
largely and permanently as Germany. 

In 1681 a society of Germans, was formed, in the 
town of Frankfort, for the purpose of sending settlers here. 
This society purchased through their agent, Francis Dan- 
iel Pastorius, a tract of 5,700 acres of land of William 
Penn, near the city of Philadelphia. A colony was found- 
ed in the cities of Cresheim and Crefelt, which constituted 
a palantinate. This colony was first composed of ten gen- 
tlemen and they came here August 12, 1683, and purchased 
of Penn 25,000 acres; 22,377 acres was set apart for the 
Manatanny patent, and on the 6th of October of that year 
the main colony arrived, and gave to their settlement tha 
name of Germantown, which it has ever since borne. It 
was incorporated as a borough town, by a patent from 
Penn, executed in England in 1689. 

This colony brought with them the same upright and 
substantial elements of character that the puritans did who- 



THE UNITED STATES. 61 

settled Massachusetts. They were healthy, frugal, mdus- 
trious, and free from bigotry, differing very materially in 
that respect from their Celtic neighbors on the south — 
Calvert's Irish Koraan catholic colony in Maryland. 
These Germans Were generally members of the society of 
Friends, and it was in consequence of their religion that 
they were so bitterly persecuted in Germany that they 
were forced, like the puritans of England, to seek a 
home in this country. With the English branch of the 
Teutonic race they readily assimilated, and these two 
branches of that race have, on all occasions since, rallied 
together in support of religious freedom and free govern- 
ment when assailed; proving that in the Teutonic race 
civil and religious liberty has its surest and most stable 
foundation. (1) 

(1) Two hundred years ago the Germans In person began to foUow their 
English cousins to the new world, and during that period the ever swelling 
tide of that people has increased to countless numbers, who, in their pecu- 
liarly earnest manner, have engaged in the affairs of government, in 
clearing wildernesses and in following every art, trade and profession 
known to American industry. The Germans in this country are citi- 
zens, not aliens; they do not meet in conventions to dictate terms or cry 
out because they are, or are not, estimated socially; they stand as an in- 
tegral part of this country, and point with pride and conscious satisfaction to 
their achievements in every walk in life. They need not point to the great 
thinkers in every field of art and science in fatherland, whose brain labors 
belong to the world. They can here right at home name thousands who 
have enriched the annals of our country with historic names. At home and 
abroad, in the pnmival forest and the cleared prairies and savannahs, on 
the tented field and on turbulent oceans, in the hut and palace, in the city 
and hamlet, in the workshop and counting house, in the departments of the 
government and in the studio and closet of the brain artisans, every- 
where, they have shown themselves equal to the best, and in many depart- 
ments of skilled labor superior to all, and they recognize all this, not as 
Germans of the Germans, but as Americans of the Americans. The loyalty of 
the German American freedom of thought and action, his firm, unswerving 
devotion to sound finances, stand out prominently in the history of this 
country. To him unquestionably more than to any other one does this 
country owe thanks for destroying slavery, inspiring liberty and national 
honesty. Long before the abolition party was heard or dreamed of, the 
grand words, "Slavery is a crime and should not exist," had been uttered hy 
German colonists in this country. "The German exiles of 1848, who fled to 
this country," continued Mr. Wolf, "formed the basis and inspiration of the 
Republican party. Everywhere they identified themselves with the friends of 
liberty and against slavery. They sought no office. Self was foreign to their 
nature. 'Their lines had not been cast in pleasant places.' Hence their 
intensity and devotion to and for republican institutions. It was the German 
Americans of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland during our late civil war 
that upheld the flag of the Union, and stood a solid phalanx against the 
heresy of secessioo, and when war actually came they were found on every 
battlefleld as heroic and self sacriflcing as those 'to the manner born.' The 
woods of the great west have been cleai-ed by them, and great cities, thriving 
villages and fertile flelds have taken their place. Factories, foundries and 
workshops of every grade have been erected by them, colleges, schools, 
hospitals and asylums founded. They are preeminently the friends of the 



62 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

Penn spoke of these Cxerman colonists, in his letters, 
in the highest terms, for their industry, economy, charity, 
liberality, independence, love of order and liberty. They 
early began the manufacture of linen and woolen fabrics in 
which they established a profitable trade. They were the 
first immigrants to this country to take a stand against the 
institution of slavery. Their preacher, Benjamin Lay, 
declared publicly against it, and in 1688 this society 
addressed the Philadelphia yearly meeting at Burlington, 
"protesting against the buying, selling, and holding men 
in slavery, declaring it in their opinion 'an act irrecon- 
cilable with the precepts of the Christian religion.' " This 
was the origin of that Philadelphia anti slavery society of 
which Benjamin Franklin was president, and which pursued 
the institution until they had hunted it to its grave. There 
is another fact which may not be generally known connect- 
ing the Germans with this country. The charts prepared 
for Columbus' voyage were made by a German and the 
continent itself derived its name from a German name — 
Emmerick. This statement was made at the second 
centennial celebration of the German settlements in 
America, on the 6th of October, 1883, in Washington, 
D. C, by Mr. Theodore Poesche, of that city, and in 
reply to a letter from the writer asking for his authority, 
he says: 

"In my statement about the origin of the name ''America'' I did 
not mean to question the fact that that name is derived from "Amerigo 
Vespucci." I only showed the source the name "Amerigo" came 
from. This is the old (merman name, "Emmerick," which came to 
Italy with the Longobards and was formerly used there in its Latin ' 
form Americus. It is a man's name, yet there is alsv) a town on the 
Rhine bearing it. The savant who coined the name "America" out 
of the name "Amerigo'- was Hylacomylas;; he did so in a new edition 
of Ptolemy, which he published about the year 1540 in St, Die 
Lorraine." 

common school system. They are the greatest foes of cant and hypocrisy in 
political and social problems. The curse of disintegration rested upon 
Germany and her sons for centuries, but the last decade has witnessed a 
unification of German. power and enterprise unparalleled in history, and the 
spirit that has achieved so much for fatherland has been caught up by 
the German Americans on this side of the ocean They are no longer divided, 
they are united, one in impulse, thought, and action with their Anglo 
American cousins hexey—Mjctract from a sjDeech by Hon. Simon Wolf at the 
second centennial celebration of the settlement of the Germans in America, Oct. 6, 1883. 



THE UNITED STATES. 63 



CHAPTER Y. 



Death of Charles II., and the ascension of his brother to the throne. 
Under the title of James II.— Rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, 
capture and execution; trial, confiscation, and execution of his 
soldiers — Four thousand prisoners transported to the American 
plantations and sold — Abdication and flight of the king after a 
short reign — William III. and Mary called to the throne — Rebel- 
lion of Ireland and the colonies of Maryland and Virginia — War 
with France of seven years — Deatii of the king, and Princess Anne, 
of Denmark, called to the throne— Queen Anne's war — Crushing 
defeat of the French — The peHcn of Utrecht — Death of the queen, 
and ascension of George I. to the tlirone — The effect of these Euro- 
pean wars on the American colonies. 

The reign of Charles II. was ternimatecl very suddenly 
by death, on the 6th of February, 1685, and a few hours 
after, his brother, the Duke of York, was proclaimed^king 
of England under the title of James II. He came to the 
throne under the most favorable auspices, and by the exer- 
cise of a moderate share of discretion might have had a 
long and prosperous reign. At the commencement he 
propitiated the people by a promise to protect and support 
the religion and laws of the country, but in a short time 
became infatuated with the idea of restoring the Roman 
catholics to power in England, and in his efforts to do 
that alienated his subjects to such an extent that they 
forced him to abdicate. 

In the early part of his reign the Duke of Monmouth, 
the son of Charles 11. , and the king's nephew, but who 
had forfeited his claim to the throne by a previous re- 
bellion and banished the kingdom, had returned to reclaim 
it, with an army of five thousand men to support him. 
He was met by the forces of the king at Sedgemore and 
Bridgewater, where a battle ensued, in which he was 



64 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

defeated and his army taken prisoners. He was tried for 
treason and executed. His deluded tollowers were tried 
by that man of infamous memory, Judge Jeffries, and 
treated with barbarous cruelty. Six hundred of them were 
condemned to be hanged and their quarters exposed to 
the highway. Some were able to purchase their lives by 
appeals to the venality of the judge, and conveyed to him 
their estates. One gentleman gave him £14,000, equiva- 
lent to about $70,000, and those who were not rich enough 
to purchase their lives at his price were hanged or cruelly 
whipped, or, as Bigland says in his history of England, 
sent to the American plantations and sold as slaves. They 
numbered about four thousand, and found their way mostly 
to Virginia and the Carolinas. Their sale here was but a 
formal one, under the apprentice system, for a number of 
years; but the king expressly commanded that it should 
not be for a less term than ten years, and that they should 
not be permitted to redeem themselves, by money or 
otherwise, until the term was fully completed. There 
were many wealthy and educated men among them, and 
such was the sympathy of the people here for them, on 
account of their misfortunes, that they paid but little regard 
to the commands of the king, and on the accession of 
William III. and Mary such as had been transported for 
political oifenses merely, were pardoned. 

Had the government of the United States treated Mr. 
Jefferson Davis and his soldiers, for their rebellion, as the 
Duke of Monmouth and his soldiers were treated by the 
government of England, the southern people might have 
some reason to complain of its harshness and cruelty; but 
our chief justice (Chase) refused to try Siuj of our rebels, 
and the president and congress pardoned them without 
their suffering any punishment at all, or, at most, merely 
a disability precluding some of the leaders from holding a 
national office, and that was in little time removed as to 



THE UNITED STATES. 65 

most of tliem. The assassins of President Lincoln and the 
keeper of Andersonville prison (Wirz) were the only ones 
who were executed. Such clemency was never before 
known in the worlds history, and the barbarous manner 
in which the ex rebels liave since behaved in shooting and 
hanging northern men residing in the south because they 
l)elonged to the victorious party in the war, and the cold 
blooded massacres of hundreds of their former slaves for 
th« same reason, show that it is a very doubtful question 
whether the extraordinary clemency extended to these 
men (many of them, too, descendants of the soldiers of the 
Duke of Monmouth's rebellion) was well advised. 

Abandoned by the nobility, by his court and council, 
by the illigitimate sons of Charles II, who had been 
raised to the peerage, by Princess Anne, his second 
daughter, who afterwards became queen of England, and 
by the army, which refused to obey him, James saw his 
desperate situation, and, fearing the fate of his father, 
Charles I, resolved upon flight, and set out at once for 
France. His escape was easy for no one had orders to 
stop him or in any wa}^ hinder him from disposing of 
himself as he pleased. 

The danger of being left without a king was fully 
appreciated by the British nation, and both of the great 
political parties, and the clergy which constituted a third 
party, united in calling in the Prince of Orange to take the 
throne. He accepted the invitation, and landed in Eng- 
land without opposition, at the head of a Dutch army of 
thirteen thousand men. 

This is what is called the British revolution and the 
fixing of the British constitution. It was the commence- 
ment of a new era in Great Britain, and constituted one of 
the most important events in English history. It was the 
peaceable revolt of the people against their sovereign, 
and the calling in and seating of a foreign prince on the 



6Q POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

throne. It was the fixing of the line of succession and the 
limit of sovereign power, so that thereafter parliament, 
and not the king shonld represent the British nation; that 
parliament should make the laws, not he; and by those 
laws he should govern the kingdom. The immediate 
result of this revolution in England was war with France 
and the commencement of hostilities between the colonies 
of those two powers here. 

James II. was kindly received by the French king, 
Louis XIY., who encouraged him to undertake the recov- 
ery of his lost throne and crown, and furnished him with 
an army for that purpose. With this force he made a 
descent upon Ireland, which was still loyal to him, and, 
placing himself at the head of the Irish Roman catholic 
army there, laid siege to Londonderry, a city which bad 
declared for William III. and Mary. King William pro- 
ceeded against him at the head of a powerful English army, 
raised the siege, and afterwards met him on the banks of 
the Boyne, where he completely routed him. The reduc- 
tion of Limerick soon followed, which completed the 
conquest and decided the fate of Ireland. James escaped 
to France, but his army was taken prisoners, placed 
on board ship and transported out of the kingdom, the 
king adopting the same means, says Bigland, in his 
history of England, for securing the tranquility of Ireland 
that Cromwell practiced. (1.) 

A war between England and France of seven years 
duration now followed this invasion of Ireland, and their 
respective colonies here immediately conmienced hostilities. 
Maryland rebelled, and joined the French and Indians to 
fight for James and Komanism against their king and. 

1. That general, in order to break the force of the Irish rebels, published 
a permission to their officers and men to enter into the service of foreijjn 
princes with a promise not to ofTer them any molesiation. By this expedi- 
ent Cromwell found means to send above forty thousand of his enemies out 
of the kingdom, and from that time to tlie entire reduction of the Irish it is 
supposed that about one hundred thousand of these desperadoes were per- 
mitted to leave the country.— Bigland' s History of England, vol. 2, p. 186. 



THE UNITED STATES. 67 

country. Virginia, when called upon for her quota of 
troops, refused to furnish either men or money, on the 
ground that it would be of no benefit to Virginia, as that 
colony was not attacked or threatened; so the brunt of the 
war fell upon the northern colonies. Virginia cared not 
how much others suffered while her own territory was unmo- 
lested. The royal governor, I^icholson, wrote to the king 
advising that Virginia be compelled to contribute to the 
war. The king referred the subject to the next assembly, 
and that body reluctantly voted £500, but requested that 
the crown be excused from making any further grant. — 
Lippincott-s Cabinet History of Virginia^ pp>. 203, W5, 216. 

This was known as King William's war. It was 
brought to a close by a treaty of Kyswick, in September, 
1697. It gave to each nation possession of all the places 
held by them respectively at the commencement of the 
war, so that neither had gained anything; but the king 
punished the Marylanders for their rebellion by taking 
away their charter, appointing a governor over them, and 
establishing the Church of England as the only lawful re- 
ligion of their colony. Here was another instance in 
which the Maryland catholics had substantial reason for 
advocating a free toleration to all religions, now that they 
were deprived of the exercise of their own. This suppres- 
sion of their authority in Maryland lasted till 1715, when 
that colony was restored to the heirs of Lord Baltimore. 

In 1698 the king sent orders to the authorities in 
Virginia to extend to their people the benefit of the English 
toleration acts, but they did not do it, and it • was not till 
1776, and through the most strenuous efforts of Jefferson 
and Mason, that the supremacy of the church was broken 
down and all forms of religion were placed on an equal 
footing. 

Following the treaty of Ryswick there was an interval 
of peace of five years, when it was seen that the rapid. 



'68 POLITICAL HISTOKY OF 

strides by which France was advancing to supremacy upon 
the continent of Europe was threatening the independence 
of every nationality, and, alarmed for their safety, or pre- 
tending to be, England, Holland, and Austria formed a 
league to oppose any further increase of the power of 
France, and this league was afterward joined by Portugal, 
Prussia, Denmark, and the Duke of Savoy. The immedi- 
ate occasion of this alarm was that the dynasty of Spain 
:had become extinct by the death of King Charles 11. , who 
had appointed in his will as his successor the Duke of 
Anjou, grandson of Louis XI Y., king of France, and he 
(Louis) claimed for his family the inheritance of the 
the Spanish monarchy. 

It was evident that Louis aimed at the consolidation of 

the Spanish dominions with France in one preponderating 

empire, and the peril which the consummation of such a 

scheme threatened Europe is thus summed up by Mr. 

-Alison: 

"Spain had threatened the liberties of Europe in the end of the 
sixteenth century; France had all but overthrown them in the close of 
the seventeenth; what hope was there of their being able to make 
head against them both, united under such a monarcy as Louis XIV?" 
— Military History of the Duke of Marlborough, p. 52. 

The death of William III., king of England, took 
place soon after the formation of this European alliance 
against the house of Bourbon. The precise date was 
March 8, 1702, after a reign of thirteen years. The Princess 
Anne, of Denmark, now came to the English throne, and 
great anxiety was felt least, by the death of the king, the 
league which he had been mainly instrumental in forming 
might be dissolved; but all such apprehensions were put to 
rest by the queen, who, on the third day after her accession 
to the throne, went to the house of lords and declared her 
purpose to carry on the war according to the plans of the 
late king. 



THE UNITED STATES. 69' 

The war was then commenced and continued for 
eleven years. It was known as Queen Anne's war. In 
this war England was fighting France and Spain combined, 
and her colonies here were assailed by those powers and 
their Indian allies with the most vindictive fury and 
atrocity during the whole time. 

This war of Queen Anne's was not only a gigantic strug- 
gle between France and England for supremacy on the conti- 
nent of Europe, but it was a struggle between those two 
powers for supremacy here. The fate of this continent hung 
in the scales, to be decided by the issue of battle, whether it 
should be English or French, and that determination was 
made, not, as has been claimed by some writers, on the 
Plains of Abraham, overlooking the St. Lawrence, in 
1Y59, but in Europe, in 1704, on the banks of the Danube, 
at the battle of Blenheim. It was then and there that the 
decision was made that America should belong to the 
Anglo Saxon race. 

Mr. Alison, in his military history of the Duke of 
Marlborough, says of the battle of Blenheim: 

"If France had been victorious the destinies of the world would 
have been changed. The Stuart dynasty and the Romish church 
would haye been reestablished in England, and the energy breathed 
by religious freedom into the Anglo Saxon race might have expired, 
and the colonial empire of England would have withered away and 
perished, as that of Spain had done in the grasp of the Inquisition. 
The Anglo Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to 
overspread the earth and subdue it, and the centralized despotism of 
the Roman empire would have been renewed on continental Europe." 
— AllisOTVi Life of Marlborough^ p. 248. 

America would have been Roman catholic in religion 
and French in nationality. 

" This war was concluded in 1713 by the peace of 
Utrfecht, when France ceded to England all of the territory 
of Hudson's Bay in North America, all of Newfoundland, 
New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and the supremacy in 



70 POLITICAL HISTORY OF 

the American fisheries. England further secured by this 
treaty the monopoly of the slave trade in the Spanish ports 
and its exclusive control in the new world. For the pos- 
session of this franchise she bound herself in that treaty to 
furnish 4,800 negro slaves annually for thirty years, 
amounting in all to 144,000 negroes. At the time of the 
conclusion of this treaty the total population of the English 
colonies here is supposed to have been about 500,000. — 
Bancrofts Colonial History^ p. W5. 

The death of Queen Anne took place on the 1st of 
August, 1714, having reigned thirteen years. Among the 
great cpestions which had been settled, or thought settled 
during her reign, were: first, the power of France as no 
longer a menace against the independence of European 
nations; second, that America should be an exclusively 
English possession; and third, that African slavery should 
be a permanent domestic and state-supported institution of 
its southern colonies in North America. She bestowed 
the ofiice of governor of Virginia upon the Earl of Orkney 
as a life sinecure in 1705, and provided a deput}^ to per- 
form the functions of the office. Tlie white population of 
Yirginia at the time of the death of the queen was esti- 
mated by the British board of trade at 95,000. 

All these questions, with one exception, have since 
been reopened and submitted anew to the arbitrament of 
the sword. That of the French possessions in North 
America was fought over again on the Plains of Abraham; 
that of J^^vai^d as the sovereign power over all North 
America, in the revolt of her colonies here in 1776; and 
that of African slavery, as a permanent domestic and state 
supported institution in the southern states reopened by 
their rebellion in 1861 and the war that followed. The 
only remaining question to be reopened is the domination 
>of the country by the Celtic race (the Irish branch of 

I B I'd! 



THE UNITED STATES. 7l 

it,) and the Roman catholic church, and that will be 
the issue, as shown further on in this work, which will signal 
the opening of the second century of this republic, unless the 
country is influenced by a more enlightened and patriotic 
statesmanship, and wiser councils than have prevailed 
since 1874. 




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